Ibn ‘Arab? - Time
and Cosmology
Mohamed Haj Yousef
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
Ibn ‘Arabi - Time and Cosmology
Time is one of the most important issues in physics, cosmology, philosophy and
theology. Many books and articles have been published in this interdisciplinary
field before, but none of those studies have fully described lbn ‘Arabi’s unique
view which is central to understanding, for example, his controversial theory of
the ‘oneness ofbeing’.
This book is the first comprehensive attempt to explain Ibn ‘Arabi’s distinc-
tive view of time and its role in the process of creating the cosmos and its rela-
tion with the Creator. By comparing this original view with modern theories of
physics and cosmology, Mohamed Haj Yousef constructs a new cosmological
model that may deepen and extend our understanding of the world, while poten-
tially solving some of the drawbacks in the current models such as the historical
Zeno’s paradoxes of motion and the recent Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox
(EPR) that underlines the discrepancies between Quantum Mechanics and Rela-
tivity.
Ibn ‘ Arab i - Time and Cosmology is an important contribution to the fields of
philosophy, cosmology, physics and theology.
Mohamed Haj Yousef is lecturer in the Department of Physics, United Arab
Emirates University.
Culture and civilization in the Middle East
General Editor: Ian Richard Netton
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1 The Epistemology of Ibn Khaldun
Zaid Ahmad
2 The Hanbali School of Law and Ibn Taymiyyah
Conflict or conciliation
Abdul Hakim I Al-Matroudi
3 Arabic Rhetoric
A pragmatic analysis
Hussein Abdul-Raof
4 Arab Representations of the Occident
East-West encounters in Arabic fiction
Rasheed El-Enany
5 God and Humans in Islamic Thought
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Maha Elkaisy-Friemuth
6 Original Islam
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Yasin Dutton
7 Al-Ghazali and the Qur’an
One book, many meanings
Martin Whittingham
8 Birth of The Prophet Muhammad
Devotional piety in Sunni Islam
Marion Holmes Katz
9 Space and Muslim Urban Life
At the limits of the labyrinth of Fez
Simon O 'Meara
10 Islam Science
The intellectual career of Nizam al-Din al-Nizaburi
Robert G. Morrison
11 Ibn ‘Arabi - Time and Cosmology
Mohamed Haj Yousef
Ibn ‘Arabi - Time and
Cosmology
Mohamed Haj Yousef
O Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2008
by Routledge
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© 2008 Mohamed Haj Yousef
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
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ISBN 0-203-93824-0 Master e-book ISBN
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ISBN 13: 978-0-203-93824-9 (ebk)
To the Spirit of al-Shaykh al-Akbar Muhyi ed-Din Ibn al-‘Arabi, may
Allah’s Mercy be upon him.
To the Spirits of my parents, may Allah’s Mercy be upon them,
To my dearest wife who supported me all the times,
To my two sons Abdullah and Yousef, and my daughter Fatima,
To my brothers and sisters, in Islam, and in humankind,
To all I dedicate this humble work.
Contents
List of figures x
List of tables xi
Foreword by Professor James W. Morris (Boston College) xii
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xix
Abbreviations xx
1 Cosmology and time 1
2 General aspects of Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time and days 27
3 The significance of the divine week and its seven days 73
4 The actual flow of time 100
5 Unicity and multiplicity 117
6 The Single Monad model of the cosmos 140
7 The Single Monad model and its implications for modem
physics 165
Notes 1 93
Bibliography 205
Index 218
Figures
1.1 ‘The Cloud’ and what it contains, down to the ‘establishing
Throne’ 10
1 .2 The establishing Throne and what it contains down to the
Pedestal 1 1
1.3 The (divine) Pedestal and what it contains down to the
constellations 12
1 .4 The orb of the constellations and what it contains down to the
Earth 13
2.1 The Cycle of Life 54
2.2 The daytime and night in the sky 63
3.1 The Divine Quadratic Rule 77
4.1 The taken-out days 105
4.2 The intertwined days, and their relation with the circulated
days 108
4.3 The Zodiac and the motion of the days through it 1 12
5.1 The Real, the ‘Possible’ existents, and the ‘Impossible’ 121
6.1 Summary of the different types of knowable things 149
6.2 The Different Divisions of Existence 150
6.3 The Kaaba, with people on the Hajj circumambulating it 153
6.4 How circumambulating the Kaaba is similar to the Greatest
Element’s creation of the Single Monad 154
7.1 0-D, a point 186
7.2 1-D, a line segment 189
7.3 2-D, a unit square 190
7.4 3-D, a unit cube 190
Tables
2.1
Days of some orbs and divine names
53
3.1
The correspondences between the seven days of the divine
week and the seven heavens, seven earthly regions, divine
names, lunar mansins and letters of the Arabic alphabet
85
4.1
The taken-out days
104
4.2
The intertwined days (Sunday)
107
4.3
The intertwined days (all days)
109
4.4
The action of the Soul (on the world) in each day of the seven
days of events and the ratio of contribution by the seven
heavens
113
Foreword
Students of the world’s religious traditions, together with specialists in the
history of premodern science and philosophy, are well aware of the centrality
within the scriptures and theologies of the major world religions, over many cen-
turies, of detailed symbolic accounts of cosmology and metaphysics (including
the intricate problematics of creation) - and of the crucial role played within
each of those religious traditions by corresponding philosophical and scientific
schemas of astronomy and cosmology that often provided a common language
and framework of understanding shared by their educated elites. In premodern
times, this key interpretative function was particularly important in the case of
that complex of Hellenistic philosophic and cosmological disciplines largely
shared by educated proponents of each of the three Abrahamic faiths. Given
today’s widespread journalistic stereotypes about the supposed ‘opposition’ of
science and religion, this book is a salutary reminder - and an extraordinarily
rich and detailed illustration - of the complex interpenetration of philosophical
and scriptural elements throughout the central traditions of later Islamic thought,
prior to the recent scientific revolutions. At the same time, Dr Haj Yousefs
training and expertise as a modem physicist allow him to suggest, in his provoc-
ative final chapter, intriguing ways in which the earlier cosmological and theo-
logical speculations of Ibn ‘Arabi carefully outlined in this study may also
parallel very recent developments and insights in the cosmological theories
(especially String Theory) of modern physics. In that sense, this study provides a
more demanding, Islamic parallel to such recent popular works such as F.
Capra’s Tao of Physics.
While the prolific Andalusian Sufi writer Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240) is
most widely known today as a mystic and spiritual teacher, his voluminous
writings - and particularly his immense magnum opus, the Meccan Illumina-
tions, which is the primary source for this study - constantly refer to the
insights, theories, and cosmological schemas of earlier Muslim philosophers
and scientists, such as Avicenna and the popular spiritual treatises of the ‘Breth-
ren of Purity’ ( Ikhwdn al-Safa’). For that reason, this book begins with a helpful
survey of the standard theories of cosmology and time found in earlier
Hellenistic thinkers, which were largely taken over into the succeeding traditions
of Islamic philosophy and science. However, the most creative and unfamiliar
Foreword xiii
aspects of Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmological ideas - especially his distinctive concep-
tion of the ever-renewed, ongoing and instantaneous nature of the cosmic
process of creation ( tajdid al-khalq ) - are carefully woven together from
what have always been profoundly mysterious, problematic, and complexly
interwoven symbolic formulations in the Qur’an. Thus the main focus and
novel scholarly contribution of the central chapters of this volume lie in the
author’s careful unfolding and clarification of the intended meanings and refer-
ences of this dense Qur’anic cosmological symbolism of time and creation, as
that multi-dimensional world-view is systematically expounded in elaborate
accounts scattered throughout several of Ibn ‘Arabi’s major works. Every
reader who engages with this demanding discussion will come away, at the
very least, with a heightened appreciation of the symbolic richness and challeng-
ing intellectual dilemmas posed by this unduly neglected - yet arguably quite
central and unavoidable - dimension of the Qur’an and its metaphysical
teachings.
In the penultimate chapter of this study, before taking up possible analogies
to Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas in modern physics, the author turns to the language of
ontology and to a subject - the paradoxical relations of the divine One and the
many - far more familiar to students of Ibn ‘Arabi, or of comparable forms of
thought in earlier Neoplatonism and the metaphysics of other world religions.
Despite the initial unfamiliarity (for non-specialists) of some of Ibn ‘Arabi’s
Qur’anic symbolism and technical terminology here, his approach to conceiving
and intellectually explaining the mysterious relationship between the divine
Source and its infinite manifestations clearly mirrors Plato’s classical dialectical
enumeration of the alternative ontological hypothesis outlined in his Parme-
nides. Today, of course, no one is used to thinking of those recurrent metaphysi-
cal problems in terms of the theological language of creation. But by this point
Dr Haj Yousef has outlined just how Ibn ‘Arabi, by carefully elaborating the
complex literal indications of the Qur’an itself, is able to illuminate both the
temporal and the ontological dimensions of the divine cosmogonic Origination
of all things.
The fascinating ‘phenomenology’ of the human psychological and experien-
tial dimensions of this cosmic creative process, we might add, is also the subject
of even more fascinating discussions in Ibn ‘Arabi and later Islamic philosophers
(as well as earlier Sufis and mystical thinkers). But the elaboration of that closely
related topic would require another, equally wide-ranging and original study. So
the author has prudently set that related issue aside while focusing on those
dimensions of ontology and time most directly connected with the analogous
approaches of modem theoretical physics that he outlines in his concluding,
more speculative chapter.
This constantly challenging and thought-provoking study is clearly the fruit
of years of research on one of the most difficult subjects to be found in the writ-
ings of one of Islam’s most seminal, creative, inspired, and notoriously difficult
thinkers. So even those who may find Ibn ‘Arabi’s language and speculations
difficult to follow will surely come away from their reading with a heightened
xiv Foreword
appreciation of the relative poverty, thoughtlessness and lack of sophistication in
today’s dominant public discourse about religion and science, and in our prevail-
ing ways of conceiving and approaching these fundamental human issues of cos-
mology, ontology and theology.
James W. Morris, Boston College
Preface
Ibn ‘Arabi is one of the most prominent figures in Islamic history, especially in
relation to Sufism and Islamic philosophy and theology. In this book, we want to
explore his cosmology and in particular his view of time in that cosmological
context, comparing his approaches to the relevant conclusions and principles of
modern physics whenever possible. We shall see that lbn ‘Arabi had a unique and
comprehensive view of time which has never been discussed by any other philos-
opher or scientist, before or even after Ibn ‘Arabi. In the final two chapters, in
which we shall discuss some of the ways his novel view of time and cosmology
may be used to build a complete model of the cosmos that may deepen and extend
our understanding of the world, while potentially solving some of the drawbacks
and paradoxes in the current cosmological models of modem physics.
As we discuss in the opening chapter, there is no doubt that time is one of the
most important issues in physics, cosmology, philosophy and theology, and hun-
dreds of books and articles have been published in these fields. However, none
of these studies had fully developed Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique view of time in its cos-
mological dimensions, although his conception of time is indeed central to
understanding, for example, his controversial theory of the ‘oneness of being’.
One possible reason for this relative neglect is the difficult symbolic language he
usually used. Also, he did not discuss this subject at length in any single place in
his extant works - not even in chapters 59, 291 and 390 of the Futuhat whose
titles relate directly to time - so we must piece together his overall cosmological
understanding of time from his scattered treatments in many works and different
contexts within his magnum opus, the Futuhat , and other books. Therefore this
book may be considered the first comprehensive attempt to set forth all the rele-
vant dimensions of time in lbn ‘Arabi’s wider cosmology and cosmogony.
In Chapter 2, after briefly discussing the different physical theories and
models of the cosmos, we start by describing lbn ‘Arabi’s cosmos in some detail.
Then we also give an extensive review of the different philosophical views of
time and its properties from the philosophical and scientific point of view to
show the importance of the subject and relate it to Ibn ‘Arabi’s model. Then, in
Chapter 2, we begin to introduce Ibn ‘Arabi’s general concepts of time and
‘days’, which are then developed in greater detail in each of the succeeding
chapters.
xvi Preface
To start with, Ibn ‘Arabi considers time to be a product of our human ‘imagi-
nation’, without any real, separately existing entity. Nevertheless, he still consid-
ers it to be one of the four main constituents of existence. We need this imagined
conception of ‘time’ to chronologically arrange events and what for us are the
practically defining motions of the celestial orbs and other physical objects, but
for Ibn ‘Arabi real existence is attributable only to the actually existing thing that
moves, not to motion nor to time (or space) in which this motion is observed.
Thus Ibn ‘Arabi distinguishes between two kinds of time - natural and
para-natural - and he explains that they both originate from the two forces of the
soul: the active force and the intellective force, respectively. Then he explains
that this imaginary time is cyclical, circular, relative, discrete and inhomo-
geneous. Ibn ‘Arabi also gives a precise definition - drawing on the specific
usage of the Qur’an and earlier Arab conceptions of time - of the day, daytime
and night, showing how these definitions are related to the relative motions of
the celestial orbs (including the Earth), where every orb has its own ‘day’, and
those days are normally measured by our normal observable day that we count
on the Earth.
In Chapter 3 (and also in Chapter 6), we explain the central significance, in
Ibn ‘Arabi’s notion of time and cosmology, of the divine ‘Week’ of creation,
and we begin to develop some of its interesting consequences. To begin with,
Ibn ‘Arabi considers the cosmic, divine Week, rather than the day or any other
time unit, as the main primitive time cycle. Thus he explains how the world is
created in seven (cosmic, divine) ‘Days’, what happens on each Day, and the
underlying ontological relation between the Week’s Days of creation and the
seven fundamental divine Names of Allah. Ibn ‘Arabi also shows that all the
Days of this cosmic Week, including the last Day (Saturday), all actually occur
in Saturday, the ‘Day of eternity’. This complex understanding of the ever-
renewed divine creation in fact underlies his conception of the genuine unifica-
tion of space and time, where the world is created ‘in six Days’ (from Sunday to
Friday) as space, and then is displayed or manifested on Saturday in the process
that we perceive as time. However, we perceive this complicated process of cre-
ation in Six Days and the subsequent appearance of the world on the seventh
Day, we perceive all this only as one single moment of our normal time. In fact,
on the basis of Qur’anic indications and the corresponding experiential confir-
mations of the mystical ‘knowers’ (‘ urafa ’) (later explained in Chapter 5), Ibn
‘Arabi insists that the entire created world ceases to exist immediately and intrin-
sically right after its creation, and that then it is re-created again and again. For
him, this process of divine re-creation happens gradually (in series), not at once:
i.e. it always takes six divine ‘Days’ to be prepared and the last Day to manifest.
However, we - the creatures - do not witness this re-creation in six Days, since
we witness the created world only in the seventh Day (Saturday, which he calls
‘the Day of eternity’). So the creation of the world in six Days actually happens
every moment, perpetually and recurrently. Therefore, those first six divine Days
are actually the creative origin of space and not time, which is only the seventh
Day. In this novel conception, for the first time in history, the ‘Week’, as the
Preface xvii
basic unit of space-time, will have a specific and quite essential meaning in
physics and cosmology.
Even more important in Ibn ‘Arabi’s conception of time, however, is his
understanding of the ‘Day’ of creation as a minimum indivisible Day, a kind of
‘instant of time’ ( al-zaman al-fard) that also includes (since it includes all of
creation) the instants of that normal day itself which we live in and divide into
hours, minutes, seconds and so on. In order to explain this initially paradoxical
notion, Ibn ‘Arabi introduces - again initially mysterious Qur’anic on the basis
of indications - the different nature and roles of three very different lands of
compounded days (the ‘circulated’ days, the ‘taken-out’ days and the ‘inter-
twined’ days), which highlight the fact that the actual flow of time is not as
uniform and smooth as we feel and imagine. The key concept underlying these
complex developments is that Ibn ‘Arabi emphasizes, following the Qur’an, that
only one creative ‘event’ should be happening on every Day (of the actual
cosmic, divine Days of creation), and not the many different (temporal and
spatial) events that we observe. To reconcile this apparent contradiction between
the unitary Act (and ‘instant’) of Creation and the apparent phenomena of spatial
and temporal multiplicity, he reconstructs the normal, observable days that we
actually perceive in a special manner that is complexly grounded in the different
divine ‘Days’ of the actual flow of time. We shall explain his complex concep-
tion of these very different types of days in detail in Chapter 4.
The principle of perpetual re-creation, one of the more famous elements of
Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmology and cosmogony, is fully explained in Chapter 5, where
we also take up the related question of Ibn ‘Arabi’s controversial theory of the
‘oneness of being’. This theory can be easily understood once we have grasped
his underlying conception of the eternally renewed creation in time. This com-
prehensive cosmological vision, when added to his understanding of the actual
flow of time based on the three kinds of days described in Chapter 4, can be used
to build a new unique model of the cosmos. This cosmological model, which we
shall call ‘the Single Monad model’, is explained in Chapter 6. We shall see in
this chapter that, according to this distinctive perspective on creation, the mani-
fest world works exactly like a super-computer which - despite its tremendous
speed - can do only one job at a time, where the display on the computer monitor
is analogous to the manifest world: though we appear to see a complex, continu-
ally changing picture on the screen, that complex image is actually built one
pixel at a time by one single electron-beam. This particular illustration helps us
to grasp the actual functioning of Ibn ‘Arabi’s central conception of the ultimate
oneness of being, despite the undeniable visible multiplicity of the world.
Finally, Chapter 7 is devoted to discussing some of the implications of the
Single Monad model for various related principles of modern physics and cos-
mology, including the possibilities of testing such a cosmological model. We
shall discuss in particular some of the known time-related paradoxes in current
models of physics and cosmology, and how they may be resolved according to
this novel view. It can be fairly said that Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of time and the
cosmos is a fruitful concept that potentially bridges the gap between traditional
xviii Preface
theological metaphysical views of the world and the contemporary scientific
views that are based on experimental procedures and logic. In addition to
explaining the ‘oneness of being’ and ‘creation in six Days’, other important
results of Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique concept of time include the ways it helps to
resolve the famous EPR paradox, thus potentially reconciling the two great theo-
ries of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity in modern physics, how it offers a
new understanding of the historical Zeno’s paradoxes, and how it potentially
explains the reason behind quantization, how quantities are either discrete or
continuous.
Acknowledgement
I owe the full appreciation and acknowledgement to Prof. James W. Morris,
without whom this work would not have been completed. His precious com-
ments and discussions were the rivers that produced this lake. I also would like
to thank Prof. Ian R. Netton, in whose series this book appears, for his encour-
agement and continuous support. I would also like to thank all my friends and
colleagues with whom I had great and important discussions and those who sent
me various feedback and criticism. I just would like to mention here some of
them: Prof. Radi al-Jishi, Prof. Ahmed Barbour, Dr Ahmed S. Achter, Mr
Ahmad T. Summakiyya, and Mr Jum’a al-Ahmed.
Abbreviations
This book is mainly based on Ibn ‘Arabi’s major comprehensive work Al-
Futuhat Al-Makkiyya. Because we refer to this book often, we shall use a short
reference style: each quotation from the Futuhdt is followed by a reference in
brackets: [X. 000. 00] which means: [volume.page.line]. When the line number is
omitted - in rare cases - this means that the reference is in the entire page; in a
few cases a range of a few pages is indicated as [11.229-231]. We have mainly
used the standard edition of the Futuhdt issued by many publishers based on a
reproduction of the old edition of Bulaq 1329/1911 which comprises four
volumes each about 600-700 pages of 35 lines; the page size is 20 by 27 cm (see
the Bibliography). You should notice, however, that newer reset editions may be
different although some of them are also in four volumes.
In addition to the Futuhdt, we use short form of references to many other
books by Ibn ‘Arabi (for example Ayydm Al-Sha’n and Al-Masa’H) and other
related famous works (such as William Chittick’s two important works: The Sufi
Path of Knowledge [STW] and The Self-disclosure of God [5DG]) as explained
in the Bibliography. In most of these cases we put the short form of the reference
followed by the page number, with only two exceptions: for Osman Yahya’s
classification of Ibn ‘Arabi’s books and for Ibn ‘Arabi’s Al-Masd’il, where we
refer to the listed item number instead of the page number.
All references to the Holy Qur’an are given also in the text and not in notes;
after each verse quoted or meaning indicated in the text we add a reference
(xx: y) where xx refers to the number of the Sura (chapter) and yy is the number
of the Aya (verse). For the prophetic narrations we have mainly used Kanz
al-'Ummal (The Treasure of the Workers) which includes most of the known
hadith books, indexed and numbered according to the subject. We give the
number of the hadith as [Kanz: 0000]. The table below shows the abbreviated
references in the book.
Abbreviations xxi
Abbreviation
Kan:
Futuhat
Fusus
Diwan
Ayvdm Al-Sha 'n
‘Uqlat Al-Mustawfiz
Insha ’ Al-Dawa ’ir
Al-Tadbirat Al-Ilahiyya
Al-Durrat Al-Bayda ’
Al-Tanazzulat Al-Layliyya
A l-Tanazzulat AI-Mawsil iyya
Kitab Al-Azal
Al-Mu ‘jam Al-Siifi
Original book
Al-Muttaqi Al-Hindi (1989) Kanz Al- ‘Ummdl
{The Treasure of the Workers), Beirut:
Mu’ assasat Al-Risala
Ibn ‘Arabi (n.d.) Al-Futuhat Al-Makkiyya, Vols
1-4, Beirut: n.p. (see above)
Ibn ‘Arabi (1946 ) Fusus Al-Hikam, Cairo: n.p.;
critical edition by Abu ‘Ala ‘Affifi
Ibn ‘Arabi (1996) Diwan Ibn ‘Arabi, Beirut:
Dar Al-Kutub Al-‘Ilmiyya, ed. Ahmad Hasan
Basaj
Treatise number 5 in Ibn ‘Arabi (n.d.) Rasa ’U
Ibn ‘Arabi, Beirut: Dar Ihya’ Al-Turath Al-
‘ Arabi; reprint of Hyderabad ed.
Ibn ‘Arabi (1919) ‘Uqlat Al-Mustawfiz,
including Kitab Insha ’ Al-Dawa ’ir and Kitab Al-
Tadbirat Al-Ilahiyya fi Islah Al-Mamlaka Al-
Insaniyya, Leiden: Brill, in Kleinere Schriften
des Ibn Al- ‘Arabi, ed. H. S. Nyberg
Ibn ‘Arabi, Kitab Insha ’ Al-Dawa ’ir, in Kleinere
Schriften des Ibn Al- ‘Arabi, ed. H. S. Nyberg
Ibn ‘Arabi, Al-Tadbirat Al-Ilahiyya fi Islah Al-
Mamlaka Al-Insaniyya, in Kleinere Schriften des
Ibn Al- ‘Arabi, ed. H. S. Nyberg
Ibn ‘Arabi (2002-04) Risalat Al-Durrat Al-
Bayda ' in Rasa ’il Ibn ‘Arabi, Beirut: Mu’assasat
Al-lntishar Al-‘Arabi, ed. Sa‘id ‘Abd Al-Fattah,
vol. II: 131-145
Ibn ‘Arabi (2000) Al-Tanazzulat Al-Layliyya fi
Al-Ahkam Al-Ilahiyva in Majmu ‘at Rasa ’il Ibn
‘Arabi, Beirut: Dar Al-Mahajjat Al-Bayda, vol.
II: 5-66
Ibn ‘Arabi (2000) Al-Tanazzulat Al-Mawsiliyya
fi Asrdr Al-Taharat Wa-l-Salawdt Wa-l-Ayydm
Al-Asliyya in Majmu ‘at Rasa ’il Ibn ‘Arabi,
Beirut: Dar Al-Mahajjat Al-Bayda, vol. II:
67-314
Book 1 1 in volume I of Rasa 'il Ibn ‘Arabi,
Beirut: Dar Ihya’ Al-Turath Al-‘Arabi, n.d.),
which is a photographic reprint of the same
famous collection published by the Da’irat Al-
Ma‘arif Al-‘Uthmaniyya (Hyderabad, 1948)
Al-Hakim, S. (1981) Al-Mu jam Al-Sufi: Al-
Hikma fi Hudud Al-Kalima {The Sufi Dictionary:
The Wisdom in the Word), Beirut: Dandarah
xxii
SPK
SDG
OY
EP
El 2
Abbreviations
Chittick, W. C. (1989) The Sufi Path of
Knowledge: Ibn Al- ‘Arabi ’s Metaphysics of
Imagination, Albany, NY : SUNY Press
Chittick, W. C. (1998) The Self-disclosure of
God: Principles of Ibn Al- Arabi ’s Cosmology,
Albany, NY: SUNY Press
Yahya, O. (1964), Histoire et classification de
I’ceuvre d’lbn Arabi, 2 vols, Damascus: Institut
Fran^ais
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Paul
Edwards (1967), 8 vols, New York: Macmillan
Publishing
Bianquis, Th., Bosworth, C. E., Vandonzel E. J.
and Heinrichs, W. P. (eds) (1987) Encyclopaedia
of Islam, 9 vols, Leiden: Brill
1 Cosmology and time
Cosmology is the science that studies the universe, the cosmos. Cosmos is a
word used in earlier Greek metaphysical thought that means ‘harmony’ or
‘order’, as opposed to chaos. In one Greek theory of creation, chaos is the form-
less matter from which the cosmos, or harmonious order, was created ( EP : ‘Cos-
mology’, II: 237-244; ‘Chaos and Cosmos’, II: 80-81). And time is one of the
most fundamental issues in philosophy and cosmology, since the whole of exist-
ence is nothing but consecutive series of events in time. Everybody feels time,
but most people do not question it because it is commonly experienced every
day in many things and is so familiar. However, it is far more difficult to under-
stand the philosophical nature of time and its characteristics.
Throughout the history of philosophy, many opposing views have emerged to
discuss and describe the different aspects of time, and some novel hypotheses
have eventually emerged in modern cosmology. However, it is still the dream of
every physicist to unveil the reality of time, especially since all modem theories
have come to the conclusion that time is the key.
1.1 A brief overview of early cosmological models
Beginning in the twelfth century, Arab scholars, scribes and various translators
gradually introduced Europe to the science of astronomy as it had developed in
Islamic civilization, based on earlier Hellenistic models (primarily Ptolemy and
Aristotle). But once the Catholic Church had decided to adopt the Ptolemaic or
Aristotelian geocentric 1 cosmological model as a theological principle, it consid-
ered scientists who criticized this model as heretics. Therefore, the Polish scien-
tist Nicolai Copernicus (ad 1473-1544) circulated his heliocentric model
anonymously, and his book De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium (‘On the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs’), was not published until 1543, just one year
before his death. In this model, Copernicus postulated that the Sun and the stars
are stationary and the Earth and the planets circulated around the Sun in circular
orbits. 2
It was not until 1609, when Galileo invented the telescope, that Aristotle’s
and Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe was completely discarded by
knowledgeable researchers, and replaced by the heliocentric model (Drake 1990:
2 Cosmology and time
145-163). At around the same date (1609-19), the scientist Johannes Kepler for-
mulated three mathematical statements that accurately described the revolution
of the planets around the Sun. In 1687, in his major book Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton provided his famous theory of gravity,
which supported the Copemican model and explained how bodies more gener-
ally move in space and time (Hall 1992: 202).
Newton’s mechanics were good enough to be applied to the solar system, but
as a cosmological theory it was completely false in so far as he still considered,
like Aristotle, the stars to be fixed and the universe outside the solar system to be
static. Although a dynamic universe could easily be predicted according to New-
ton’s theory of gravity, the belief in the Aristotelian static universe was so deep
and strong that it persisted for some three centuries after Newton (Seeds 1990:
86-107).
In 1718, Edmund Halley compared the positions of stars recorded by the Baby-
lonians and other ancient astronomers with the latest observations and realized that
the positions of some of the stars were not the same as they had been thousands of
years earlier. Some of the stars were in fact slightly displaced from the rest by a
small but noticeable amount. This is called ‘proper motion’, which is the apparent
motion of the star (perpendicular to the line of sight) in relation to the background
stars that are very far away. In 1783, William Herschel discovered the solar
motion, the Sun’s motion relative to the stars in its galactic neighbourhood. Her-
schel also showed that the Sun and other stars are arranged like the ‘grains of abra-
sive in a grindstone’ (Ferguson 1999: 162-165), which is now called the Milky
Way galaxy. More than a century later, in 1924, Hubble was able to measure dis-
tances to some stars (based on the ‘redshift’), 3 and he showed that some bright dots
that we see in the sky are actually other galaxies like ours, although they look so
small because they are very far away (Hartmann 1990: 373-375).
The Aristotelian theory of a static universe (i.e. of all the stars) had to be
reviewed after Hubble’s discovery of the redshift of light coming from all distant
stars, which indicated that everything in the universe is actually moving; just as
Ibn ‘Arabi had said many centuries before. In his bestselling book of the 1980s,
Stephen Hawking says:
Even Einstein, when he formulated the general theory of Relativity in 1915,
was so sure that the universe had to be static that he modified his theory to
make this possible, introducing a so-called cosmological constant into his
equations.
(Hawking 1998: 42)
This of course was soon proved to be wrong, and everybody now knows that the
cosmos is in continuous motion. Einstein himself later considered this to be one
of his greatest mistakes. Ibn ‘Arabi, however, declared plainly that the stars
cannot be fixed at all, and he even gave numbers and units to the speed of their
proper motion [III. 548. 28, 11.441.33], which are consistent with the latest accu-
rate measurements.
Cosmology and time 3
After these developments, and with the advent of new technologies employed
in making even more accurate observations, in addition to accelerated research
in physics and astronomy, a whole new view of the cosmos finally replaced the
ancient short-sighted ones. However, we cannot ever claim that all the questions
have been answered and that we have drawn a fully correct picture of the
cosmos. On the contrary, new sets of even more profound questions are still a
riddle, such as dark matter and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox (see
section 6.6).
Along with the vast amount of data collected by telescopes and space shuttles
in recent decades, many new theories have arisen to try to explain those observa-
tions. The mere concepts of ‘time’ and ‘space’ were in focus especially after the
strange and courageous ideas of Einstein about relative and curved space-time
were proved by Eddington through the observation of the total eclipse of the Sun
in 1918 in South Africa. Since then, other theories including Quantum Mechan-
ics, the Field Theory, the Superstrings Theory, and Quantum Gravity Theory,
have tried to discover and describe the actual relation between material objects
and energy on one hand, and between space and time on the other hand. Yet no
fully convincing view has ever been achieved.
1.2 Modern cosmology
Since Copernicus’ time, our view of the cosmos has grown both larger and more
accurate. It is not our purpose here to explain the modem complicated theories of
cosmology, but simply to summarize the present picture of the cosmos as seen by
scientists. Our modem picture of the cosmos dates back only to 1924, when
Edwin Hubble showed that our galaxy is not the only one in space; many of the
faint spots of light that we see in the sky are in fact other galaxies as large as our
own, but we see them so small only because they are extremely far deep in space.
Owing to the force of gravity, everything in the sky is moving or orbiting
around some point in space. The Moon orbits around the Earth, and the Earth
and other planets orbit around the Sun, which also orbits - along with other hun-
dreds of thousands of millions of stars - around the centre of the Milky Way
galaxy, which is in turn one of thousands of millions of galaxies all flying
through the vast distances of space.
In order to give a clear spatial view of this immense universe, it is better to
use big units of distance instead of using big numbers. The best accepted units of
distance in cosmology are the Tight year’ (9,500,000,000,000,000 metres),
which is the distance travelled by light in one year, and the ‘parsec’, which
equals 3.26 light years. Light travelling at 300,000 km/sec can go seven times
around the Earth (which has a circumference of approximately 44,000 km) in one
second, but it takes 8.33 minutes to reach us from the Sun (150,000,000km).
Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to us apart from the Sun, is about 4.24 light
years away. Our galaxy, like most other galaxies, is a collection of about 200
billion stars plus thousands of clusters and nebulae that form together a disk of
more than 100,000 light years in diameter, and that is about 15,000 light years
4 Cosmology and time
thick. The nearest galaxy to us lies in the Andromeda constellation, and it is
about 2.9 million light years away. Then galaxies are grouped in somewhat
irregular clusters that greatly differ in size from millions to hundreds of millions
of light years. The most distant objects discovered so far are about 13 billion
light years away. These numbers are simply approximate, just to give an idea of
where we are (Hartmann 1990: 413).
It is now also well established that everything in the world is moving: nearby
stars have proper motion, because they are pulled towards the centre of the
galaxy, and galaxies are moving away from us, because the universe is expand-
ing. On the other hand, and despite these various motions, the universe does not
have a centre or edges. It is hard to imagine, but the universe is contained or
curved around itself so that if you fly straight in one direction and keep moving
in a straight line you will one day, if you live long enough, come back from the
opposite direction to the same point (supposing no gravitational fluctuations),
just as it would happen to a person travelling around the Earth.
The stars that we see in the sky are, just like our Sun, huge nuclear fusion
reactors that are constantly converting hydrogen into heavier elements and hence
producing heat and light. But not all stars are the same: some are big and some
are small; some are young and some are old; some are bright and some are faint.
Also, many stars are dying and many others are born all the time in a process of
very complicated evolution (Seeds 1990: 134-281).
So how is all this explained according to the new cosmological theories? We
can not discuss here all the different theories in physics and cosmology, but we
want to make a quick summary of the basic principles of the different models of
the cosmos so that we can understand the potential importance of the ‘Single
Monad model’ which we are going to propose in the last chapter of this book,
based on Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique understanding of time and his famous theory of the
oneness of being.
1.3 Summary of modern theories of cosmology
After the amazing discoveries and the enormous amount of data obtained by tel-
escopes and space shuttles, and with the success of the theories of Relativity and
Quantum Mechanics, scientists tried to build new cosmological models to
explain the structure and origin of the universe on the basis of the new informa-
tion. We shall give here a very short summary of the major theories of cosmol-
ogy that have developed recently.
Scientists up to the beginning of the twentieth century believed in a stationary
universe outside the solar system, but this was soon proved to be wrong. Actu-
ally the same theory that Einstein first tried to make fit a steady universe and
fixed stars later proved that the universe is expanding. This implied that the uni-
verse had started at one moment, about 15 billion years ago, from a very small
point, but with very high density, and then it expanded to its present state. This
was called the ‘Big Bang’, and many cosmological models were developed on
the basis of this view (Narlikar 1993: ch. 2, ch. 5).
Cosmology and time 5
The ‘Steady State’ theory tried to explain the expansion of the universe by
supposing a continuous creation of matter that filled the space produced by the
expansion, but the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965
by Penzias and Wilson caused the Steady State model to be completely dis-
carded. The background radiation was interpreted as the faint afterglow of the
intense radiation of a ‘Hot Big Bang’, which had been predicted by Alpher and
Hermann back in 1949, although some people also attribute it to Gamov back in
1946 (Dolgov et al. 1990: 11).
The problem with the background radiation was that all measurements
showed it to be very uniform in all directions. This isotropy of the background
radiation was a riddle because with homogeneity no stars or galaxies could be
produced (Tayler 1993: 194). It was only in 1992 that NASA’s Cosmic Back-
ground Explorer satellite (COBE) detected the first anisotropies in this back-
ground radiation: one part in a hundred thousand, which may indicate the seeds
from which galaxies formed (Schewe and Stein 1992).
The Big Bang model was very good in explaining many of the observations,
yet on the other hand there were many contradictions (Linde 1990: 4). Many of
these theoretical contradictions were resolved by the ‘inflationary scenario’
devised by Alan Guth in 1979. Guth looked at a very early stage in the develop-
ment of the universe from about 1 0 -32 to 1 0 43 of a second after the initial crea-
tion. During this period matter was in very highly excited states, causing the
most extreme conditions of high density and pressure which made the cosmos
expand exponentially, filling the universe with an intense dense fire of particles
and photons (Linde 1990: 42).
In classical (Newtonian) mechanics, one could predict the behaviour of a
system if one exactly knew its initial state. But in Quantum Mechanics, we can
only calculate the probability of how the system will evolve (White 1966: 29). In
either case, however, the main problem in cosmology is to determine the initial
state that the laws should be applied to. One successful approach to get round
this problem is to work backwards by using the observed properties of the uni-
verse to deduce what it was like in an earlier state.
The problem with the inflationary theory is that, in order for inflation to have
occurred, the universe must have been formed containing some matter in a
highly excited state, but the next question is why this matter was in such an
excited state. To overcome this, some scientists tried to apply Quantum Mechan-
ics to the whole universe, and the result was the theory of Quantum Cosmology. 4
This may sound absurd, because typically large systems (such as the universe)
obey classical, not quantum, laws. Einstein’s theory of General Relativity is a
classical theory that accurately describes the evolution of the universe from the
first fraction of a second of its existence up to now. However it is known that
General Relativity is inconsistent with the principles of Quantum Theory, and is
therefore not an appropriate description of the physical processes that occur at
very small length scales or over very short times. To describe such processes we
require the theory of Quantum Gravity.
In non-gravitational physics, the approach to Quantum Theory that has proved
6 Cosmology and time
most successful involves mathematical objects known as ‘Path Integrals’ that
were introduced by the Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman. In the Path Inte-
gral approach, the probability that a system in an initial state A will evolve to a
final state B is given by adding up a contribution from every possible history of
the system that starts in A and ends in B. For large systems, contributions from
similar histories cancel each other in the sum and only one history is important.
This history is the history that classical physics would predict. At any moment,
the universe is described by the geometry of the three spatial dimensions as well
as by any matter fields that may be present. Given this data, one can in principle
use the Path Integral to calculate the probability of evolving to any other pre-
scribed state at a later time. However, this still requires knowledge of the initial
state.
Quantum Cosmology is a possible solution to this problem. In 1983, Stephen
Hawking and James Hartle developed a theory of Quantum Cosmology which
has become known as the ‘No Boundary Proposal’. In practice, calculating prob-
abilities in Quantum Cosmology using the full Path Integral is formidably diffi-
cult and an approximation has to be used. This is known as the ‘semi-classical
approximation’, because its validity lies somewhere between that of classical
and quantum physics. In the semi-classical approximation, one argues that most
of the four-dimensional (space-time) geometries occurring in the Path Integral
will give very small contributions to the Path Integral and hence these can be
neglected, so we can deal only with three dimensions (space). The Path Integral
can be calculated by considering just a few geometries that give a particularly
large contribution. These are known as ‘Instantons’ (from ‘the instant’, because
it aims at omitting time, so it is like a snapshot that takes into account only the
three co-ordinates of space), which describe the spontaneous appearance of a
universe from literally nothing. In this way we do not have to think about the
cosmos as something that takes place inside some bigger space-time arena. Once
the universe exists, Quantum Cosmology can be approximated by General Rela-
tivity, so time appears.
Research in these areas is still ongoing, but one of the many outstanding
problems in trying to construct a Quantum Field theory of gravitation concerns
the appropriate interpretation of quantum states for configurations that make no
overt reference to ‘time’. We shall see by the end of this book that Ibn ‘Arabi’s
understanding of time could be a key to eliminating these peculiarities, because
he simply views the world as an eternal existence that is perpetually being re-
created. He also unified space and time in a manner that has apparently never
been thought of before or since.
1.4 Preliminary outline of Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmology
Ibn ‘Arabi (ah 560-638/ad 1165-1240) was a great Sufi thinker of the Middle
Ages and one of the most influential authors in Islamic history, whose writings
have deeply influenced Islamic civilization for centuries, and have more recently
attracted wide interest in the West. The full name of Ibn al- ‘Arabi (more com-
Cosmology and time 7
monly referred to in English without the definite article) is Abu ‘Abd Allah
Muhammad Ibn al-‘Arabi al-Hatimi al-Ta’i. He was born in Murcia (in eastern
Andalusia), into a very pious and cultured family. When he was seven they
moved to Seville, and at the age of 16 he ‘entered on the path’ (of Sufism). Then
he travelled throughout and between Andalusia and Morocco for some years
before a vision compelled him to go to the East. In 1201 he travelled to Cairo,
al-Quds (Jerusalem), and finally to Mecca for pilgrimage. His many works even-
tually brought him fame, and sometimes notoriety, so that he was eventually
sought out by Seljuq and Ayyubid princes and accompanied by a group of disci-
ples. Later on he came to be popularly called Muhyi al-Din (‘Reviver of Reli-
gion’) and al-Shaykh al-Akbar (‘the Greatest Master’). He continued travelling
throughout the Middle East until he settled in 1224 in Damascus, where he
remained until his death in 1240. 5
Ibn ‘Arabi’s two most famous and influential works are Al-Futuhat Al-Makki-
yya {The Meccan Illuminations), an encyclopaedic discussion of Islamic wisdom
(Nasr 1964: 92-98), and the shorter Fusils al-Hikam {The Bezels of Wisdom),
which comprises chapters named after prophets who characterize different spir-
itual types. But Ibn ‘Arab! also wrote many other lesser known works, many of
them now available in print, such as the Kitdb Al-Tajalliyyat, Tarjuman Al-
Ashwaq, Mashahid Al-Asrar Al-Qudsiyya, Mawaqi' Al-Nujum, ‘Uqlat Al-Mus-
tawfiz, Insha Al-Dawa’ir and Al-Tadbirat Al-Ilahiyya, in addition to 29 shorter
treatises published in the Hyderabad collection commonly known as the Rasa 'il
Ibn Arabi, and many other shorter books and treatises. In one of his treatises,
Ibn ‘Arabi himself listed 289 titles, which increase to 3 17 confirmed works when
added to other titles he mentioned throughout his various books. More than 850
books have been attributed to him. 6
Ibn ‘Arabi was not an astronomer, and was never interested in astronomy as a
science. But as a Sufi and mystical theologian constantly inspired by the cosmo-
logical teachings and symbolism developed throughout the Qur’an and in a
number of related Hadith (Prophetic sayings), he talks about planets and orbs
and their motion as a structure Allah created on His Image (see section 3.2) and
relates them to the divine Names. He uses cosmology to refer to the ways we
acquire more knowledge of Allah. Apart from a few short treatises where he
talks about some astronomical subjects mixed with philosophy and theology, Ibn
‘Arabi did not devote any special book to describing the heavens. Nevertheless,
in his major book al-Futhhat al-Makkiyya (henceforth referred to as ‘the
Futuhaf), for example, we find many paragraphs that can be used to illustrate
his profound view of the cosmos.
It can surely be said that Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of the cosmos is truly challenging,
even as compared to the latest modern theories. For example, he clearly declared
that the stars are not fixed at all, more than seven centuries before this was scien-
tifically known, and he explained why we do not see their motion. Moreover, he
gave numbers to the average velocities of the proper motion of stars as 100 years
per arc degree, which is quite consistent with the measurements taken only few
decades ago [III. 548. 28, 11.441.33]; indeed he even used exactly the same unit of
8 Cosmology and time
measurement now being used (Smart 1977: 249) at a time when no such meas-
urements were possible at all. He also explained the observed ‘retrograde
motion’ of some planets and the formation of the planets in the solar system in a
similar manner to what is widely accepted today [11.443.24, III. 203. 21], But
most important in this regard is that his view of the world is heliocentric, similar
to what Copernicus suggested many centuries afterwards. He also clearly
affirmed that the Earth is spherical, moving and rotating, and he also explained
why people do not realize the motion of the Earth around its centre [1.123.17,
11.441.33,111.548.21],
Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique understanding of the process and reality of ongoing crea-
tion has been discussed by many scholars in some details. Ibn ‘Arabi himself
mentioned in particular a number of key cosmological developments in chapter
371 and in the very detailed chapter 198 of the Futuhat, as well as in other cos-
mological books such as Insha ’ Al-Dawa ’ir, Al-Tadbirat Al-Ildhiyya and 'Uqlat
Al-Mustawfiz. William Chittick has devoted an immense volume called The Self-
disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al- ’Arabi ’s Cosmology (this will be abbre-
viated as SDG ) specifically to Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmology and ontology, in addition
to some chapters of other books like The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al- ‘Arabi ’s
Metaphysics of Imagination (this will be abbreviated as SPK ), and also Henry
Corbin discussed some aspects in his pioneering study, now entitled in English
Alone with the Alone. Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi (Corbin
1969: 184). Here we want to give a very short summary of Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmol-
ogy, in a way somewhat different from the approach followed by Chittick and
Corbin. We only want to give a general description of his cosmological views,
without too much further analysis and explanation, so that we can concentrate on
the central subject of time in the rest of the book. Also we will leave the discus-
sion of the ontological aspects of his cosmology to the following chapters (see in
particular section 3.3). Here in the following we shall use the same figures Ibn
‘Arabi drew in chapter 371 of the Futuhat, and the following broad cosmologi-
cal account is mainly drawn from that chapter [III. 416-448], along with a few
paragraphs taken from the long chapter 198 [11.390-478] of the same work.
Ibn ‘Arabi’s universe comprises both the material and the abstract, spiritual
or noetic ( ‘aqli) worlds. He says that the main reason for creating the cosmos is
‘Love’. In explaining this underlying principle he often refers to a famous divine
saying (the ‘Hadith of the Hidden Treasure’) 7 which states that Allah ‘loved’ to
be known in order to grant the creatures the privilege of coming to know Him.
Thus Allah’s love to be known is a Mercy ( rahma ) from Him that He wanted to
grant to all His creatures. This Mercy is the first state of the presence of Allah
with regard to the world to be created, and hence it formed the abstract place (or
‘space’) in which creations would appear. Following indications in another Pro-
phetic Hadith, Ibn ‘Arabi calls this abstract place al-‘ama’ (‘the Cloud’). 8
According to his account, the reality of al- ‘ama ’ accepted the forms of the
‘Roaming Spirits’ ( al-arwah al-muhayyama) that Allah created directly, without
any intermediaries. This direct creation caused these angelic Spirits to roam in
the presence of Allah, knowing nothing but Him. They did not even know about
Cosmology and time 9
themselves (i.e. they had no self-consciousness). Allah appointed one of these
spirits and granted him a special epiphany of divine Knowledge ( tajalll ‘ilmi)
that engraved in him all that Allah wants to create in this entire cosmos until the
Last Day. The other primal Spirits could not know about that. This initial epiph-
any caused this Spirit - which is then called the ‘Universal Intellect’ ( al - ‘aql al-
kulli) or the ‘First Intellect’ {al- ‘aql al-awwal ) or also, using a central Qur’anic
symbol, the ‘Higher Pen’ ( al-qalam al-a ‘ala) - to become aware both of himself
and of the other Spirits, while they did not know about him.
Through this epiphany, the First Intellect saw himself composed of himself
and of his further ability to realize or ‘intelligize’. He also saw that he has an
ontic ‘shadow’ caused by the Light of that special epiphany, which was realized
through the divine Name ‘the Light’ {al-nur). This shadow is his ‘soul’, which is
called the ‘Universal Soul' {al-nafs al-kulliyya) or the ‘First Soul’ {al-nafs al-
ula), or also the ‘Highest/Protected Tablet’ {al-lawh al-a'ala/al-mahfuz), in
which he is going to write what he knows is going to happen until the Last Day.
The entire universe, then, is - to use a central Qur’anic symbolism - the Tetters’
and ‘words’ of Allah that are produced through ‘the Breath of the All-Merciful’.
We shall see in section 5.8 that the fundamental ‘blocks’ in the universe are
‘strings’ or vibrations (‘sounds’ or ‘notes’), which is similar to Ibn ‘Arabi’s
notion of the hierarchy of the ‘men of breaths’ {rijal al-anfas). Therefore it is not
only a symbolism to say that the entire universe is the Tetters’ and ‘words’ of
Allah, 9 and those words are continuously being written by the Highest Pen (the
First Intellect) in the Highest Tablet (the Universal Soul). Figure 1.1 shows this
Cloud and its contents down to the ‘establishing Throne’ {‘Arsh al-Istiwa’),
which is different from the usual cosmological meaning of the divine (normal or
usual) ‘Throne’. The ‘establishing throne’ is the throne on which ‘ Allah estab-
lished His authority ’, alluding to the verse ‘ar-Rahman ‘ala al-‘arsh istawa ’
(20:5).
According to this account in chapter 371, the universe appeared in the Uni-
versal Soul through the Universal Intellect as the result of what Ibn ‘Arabi calls
an ‘abstract (or ‘spiritual’) marriage’ {nikah ma'nawl). This is because every-
thing that happens as a result of to a particular cause is like a ‘son’ of this cause
who is considered its ‘father’, and its ‘mother’ is the object where this ‘son’
appears or happens. Just as we are all (in our outer bodily dimension) the ‘chil-
dren’ of Adam and Eve, all other things in the universe can be considered the
‘children’ of the Universal Intellect and the Universal Soul.
The Universal Soul has two forces mentioned in Figure 1.1: the ‘intellective
force’ {quwwa ‘ilmiyya) by which it perceives knowledge, and the ‘active force’
{quwwa ‘amaliyya) by which it preserves its existence through motion. The first
thing the Universal Soul gives rise to, as indicated in the same figure, is twofold:
‘the level of Nature’ 10 and the ‘Chaos’ ( al-haba ’: literally ‘the Dust’) or ‘the
Prime Matter’ {al-hayula al-iila) [1.140.14], From here on, Ibn ‘Arabi uses the
symbolic conjugal imagery of the ‘wedding’ of generative elements and of
‘birth’ at each successive level of creation or manifestation. Thus the Universal
Soul first begets Nature and then Prime Matter or Dust. Then Nature and Dust in
10 Cosmology and lime
Figure 1.1 ‘The Cloud’ and what it contains, down to the ‘establishing Throne’.
Note
This diagram is translated from Ibn ‘Arabi’s drawing in chapter 371 [111.42 1].
turn beget their first ‘son’, which is called the ‘Universal Body’ ( al-jism al-kull).
This symbolic process of cosmic ‘births’ continues in a long and defined series
of causes and results until it reaches the ‘soil’ ( turdb ) [1.140.17] which refers to
physical matter in general. So the physical world appeared ‘after’ this Universal
Body, while before that all was only spiritual.
As in Figure 1.3, the Universal Body seems to contain everything beneath it
including the zodiac (with all the stars and galaxies). Alternatively, we can con-
sider that the physical world is formed by (not ‘in’) the Universal Body because,
like the Universal Intellect and Soul, this Body can be called the First Body
because it was the first body to be created. In addition to that, the world both as
material and spiritual is formed by the Single Monad through the continuous
manifestations of this Monad. If we then consider that the First Body was the first
‘elementary particle’ to be formed by the Single Monad then the physical world
is formed ‘by’ this First Body. The other possibility is that the Universal Body is
Cosmology and time 1 1
some sort of a huge cloud of matter in primary form, which then developed into
stars and galaxies, in which case we could say that the physical world is formed
‘in’ the Universal Body. The first thing which was formed in (or by) the Univer-
sal Body was the ‘Throne’ ( al - ‘Arsh) on which Allah established his authority
( istiwa’) n from His Name ‘the All-Merciful’ ( al-Rahmdn ), which means that all
creatures beneath the Throne are to be granted the creative Mercy of their exist-
ence from Him. Therefore the first thing that the Highest Pen or First Intellect
wrote in the Higher Tablet (the Universal Soul) was this ‘Throne’ in which the
entire creation (the cosmos) is to appear. All this is shown in Figure 1.2.
Inside (or ‘beneath’) the divine Throne there appeared the ‘Pedestal’ ( al -
Kursl), whose relative dimensions and plenitude, in comparison to the infinitely
vast noetic or spiritual dimension of the ‘Throne’, Ibn ‘Arabi compares here to
‘a tiny ring in a vast desert’. And within this ‘Pedestal’ is the ‘Isotropic Orb’
(i al-falak al-atlas), which is shown to contain the sphere of the divisions of the
Figure 1.2 The establishing Throne and what it contains down to the Pedestal.
Note
This diagram is translated from Ibn ‘Arabi’s drawing in chapter 371 [III. 422], We give the title as it is
in the original text, though the diagram shows the Prime Matter and the Universal Body, in addition to
the Throne down to the Pedestal.
12 Cosmology and time
zodiac (falak al-buruj) and the sphere of the stars ( al-falak al-mukawkab),
including beneath them the separate orbs of the five planets, Sun, Moon, and the
Earth. All this is shown in Figure 1.3 and Figure 1.4.
The Isotropic Orb or sphere is so called because it contains no stars nor yet
any distinguishing feature; it is homogeneous in all directions. The sphere of the
zodiac was the first orb to be created inside the Isotropic Orb, and its surface was
divided by human convention into the 12 equal parts that are traditionally
assigned to the various zodiacal signs. According to the diagram in Figure 1.3
and Ibn ‘Arabi’s comments on it in chapter 371 of the Futuhat , it is evident that
he was ware of the large distances between the galaxies because the fixed stars
are in our galaxy while the zodiac signs are other galaxies placed very far away.
In this fast space Allah created the seven paradisiacal ‘Gardens’ ( al-jindn , s.
janna) named in the Qur’an, with their different states and levels marking the
symbolic ‘meeting-place’ between the purely spiritual realities of the divine
the Pedestal
Figure 1.3 The (divine) Pedestal and what it contains down to the constellations.
Note
This diagram is translated from Ibn ‘Arabi’s drawing in chapter 371 [III.423] .
Cosmology and time 1 3
The semi spherical skies that seem to be
supported on the seven earths are to show
the spiritual relation between heaven and
earth. Otherwise, Ibn Arab! is fully aware
of the spherical shape of earth. The Pillar
also has a spiritual meaning, it is the
Perfect Man.
Figure 1.4 The orb of the constellations and what it contains down to the Earth.
Note
This diagram is translated from Ibn ‘Arabi’s drawing in chapter 371 [III. 424],
Throne and the ‘sensible’ realities in the realm of the Pedestal. The specific
names of each of the seven Gardens are taken from related verses in the Qur’an
and Hadith, and they are different from the Seven Heavens or Skies ( samawat )
which are, for Ibn ‘Arabi, the same seven celestial spheres where the five known
planets plus the Moon and the Sun are, as shown in Figure 1.4 and Figure 1.3.
The word ‘ al-Wasila ’ that twice crosses all the seven Gardens (in Figure 1.3)
corresponds to ‘the highest level in (the highest Garden of) Eden, and it belongs
(specifically) to the Messenger (Muhammad) of Allah’ [1.319.14, also see
1.658.30], It is also known as ‘al-maqdm al-mahmud ’ (‘the commendable
station’), and it was called ‘ al-Wasila ’ (‘the Intermediary’, or ‘the Way (of
Approach to Allah)’) because ‘through It Allah may be approached’ [II. 87. 9].
Then beneath the seven Gardens comes the orb of the (apparently) fixed stars,
the constellations, and the ‘houses’ or ‘mansions’ ( manazil ) of the Moon.
14 Cosmology and time
However, Ibn ‘Arab! maintained that those stars are not fixed at all, blit that our
human time-scale is too short to notice their motion [11.441.33].
The orb of the fixed stars is (also conventionally) divided into 28 constella-
tions or ‘houses’ through which the Moon appears to pass. Then inside this
sphere of the stars, Allah created the ‘seven (visible) heavens’ ( al-samawdt ) and
the Earth. And here Ibn ‘Arabi again points out that in relation to the divine
‘Pedestal’ ( Kursi ), the dimensions of our Earth together with the seven visible
heavens are like a ring in a vast desert - just as the Pedestal stands in that same
relation to the immensity of the divine Throne.
Then Ibn ‘Arab! speaks at length (chapter 371 of the Futiihat) on the states
and levels of the Gardens and Gehenna and other descriptions of the other world
(al-akhira). Here, however, we shall restrict ourselves to this very short summary
of a few general relevant cosmological points, because of our focus on the
concept of time.
First, we should note that Ibn ‘Arabi, following normal Arabic usage, also
calls the Sun and the Moon ‘planets’. But at the same time he clearly distin-
guishes between the nature of the planets (including the Moon) and the Sun
itself, observing that the Sun alone ‘is responsible for illuminating all other
planets above and below’ [11.170.22], As is normal in Arabic writings (including
astronomical ones), he also calls the stars by the same term as ‘planets’ (s.
kawkab), yet he also knows that those stars are like the Sun in that they emit
their own light [1.217.18].
A first quick reading of Ibn ‘Arabi’ s texts about the world might reveal the
same traditional Aristotelian (geocentric) cosmological world-view because, like
most other ancient cosmologies (and apparently the Qur’an and Hadith), he talks
about ‘seven (celestial) heavens’ around or above the Earth, each inhabited by a
planet (including the Sun and the Moon, as shown in Figure 1.4). But Ibn ‘Arabi
stresses in many places [III. 548. 21, 1.123.17, 11.441.33] that this is only the
apparent view for a person who is sitting on the Earth, thus distinguishing
between this apparent earthly view and the actual motion of the planets and stars
themselves. So, for Ibn ‘Arabi, Aristotle’s view is a view of the world ‘as we see
it . . . while in itself it cannot be described like that’ [III. 548. 31]. He stresses the
central position of the Sun which he considers to be in the ‘heart’ (centre) of the
seven heavens, and he emphasizes the superiority of the Sun over other planets
that are even above it with relation to the Earth: ‘So the elevation of this place
(the Sun’s orb) comes from its being the heart of orbs, so it is a high place for its
status and the orbs that are above it in distance with relation to our heads, are
still below it in status’ [III. 441. 33]. His actual view of the (local) world is there-
fore in some sense ‘heliocentric’, at least in relation to the unique central status
or ‘rank’ ( makana ) of the Sun.
As for those areas of the sphere of the fixed stars and the visible constella-
tions normally specified by the 12 signs of the zodiac or the 28 houses of the
Moon, Ibn ‘Arabi considers them as a mere convention, which do not necessar-
ily relate to the actual positions of those particular stars. He says: ‘The zodiac
(constellations) are approximate positions, and they are houses for the moving
Cosmology and time 1 5
planets’ [III. 37. 27]. And for the Moon he says that ‘those stars are called
“houses” because planets move through them, but otherwise there is no differ-
ence between them and other stars that are not houses. . . . They are only assump-
tions and proportions in this body (of the sky)’ [III. 436. 30].
On the other hand, we cannot strictly separate the material world from the
abstract or spiritual world, as they are really overlapped - or rather, all of the
material worlds (of the ‘Pedestal’ and the visible heavens and Earth below) are
effectively contained within the immaterial divine ‘Throne’. This is why Ibn
‘Arabi sometimes mixes the two views: for example he drew a pillar to refer to
the Perfect Human Being, whom he considers to be the ‘image of the Real' (i.e.
of God) in the cosmos, so that without him the cosmos would collapse. He also
speaks, following scriptural symbolism, about the seven heavens as being ‘sup-
ported’ on the seven (levels or regions of the) earths. But Ibn ‘Arab! does not
consider that to be the actual physical picture of things, because he clearly states
that the Earth is spherical and that it rotates around its centre: ‘but the motion of
the Earth is not apparent for us, and its motion is around the middle (centre)
because it is a sphere’ [1.123.17]. He even nicely explains why we do not feel
the motion of the Earth and the cosmos in general (stars). For example he says
that people and most other creatures do not feel the motion of the cosmos
because it is all moving so the witnessed dimensions don’t change, and that is
why they imagine that the Earth is stationary around the centre [11.677.21],
1.5 Time in philosophy and science, introduction
Everybody feels time, and most people do not question it because they experi-
ence every day and it is so familiar (Fraser 1987: 17-22). But if we want to
understand the nature of time we have to answer many basic questions such as:
• What really is time?
• Can we stop it?
• Can we reverse it?
• Is the flow of time universal or is it related to the observer?
• When was the beginning of time, and does it have an end?
• Does time exist objectively, or is it only a construct of our imagination?
• What is the relationship between time and space?
• What is the structure of time?
• Is time continuous or discrete?
• What does the word ‘now’ or ‘moment’ mean?
• Why does time move into the past?
• What is the reality of the future?
These and many other similar questions have been the subject of philosophy,
physics and cosmology for many centuries, with little progress in finding con-
vincing answers. The question: ‘What is time?’ is more like the question: ‘What
is love?’, because it is something that everybody can feel it, but no one can give
1 6 Cosmology and time
an exact definition of it. If you ask this question to many people, you will cer-
tainly get as many answers. St Augustine, in his Confessions, asks, ‘What is
time?’ When no one asks him, he knows; when someone asks him, however, he
doesn’t know (EP, ‘Time’, VIII, 126).
The understanding of time was very important for early people both from the
practical view, where they needed to anticipate major events such as floods and
harvest time, and from the philosophical view, which is based on sheer curiosity
and love of knowledge. Many religions and ancient philosophies, therefore, have
tried to answer some questions about time. Some of these religions and philoso-
phies consider time as circular with no beginning or end, some consider it as
linear with infinite extension in the past and in the future, and others consider it
as imaginary, while real existence is for motion or moving bodies only.
The concept of time is necessary when we ask about the chronological order
of things and the duration of events. And because our life is full of events of all
types, so time has its signature in all aspects of life. Some examples are: the
ageing process in biology, timekeeping in mechanics, the arrow of time and
entropy in thermodynamics, and the radically varying psychical time that one
feels when waiting for something or in other circumstances. Therefore, in order
to understand the reality of time, one needs to explore many closely related fields
like physics, biology, psychology and cosmology.
In recent centuries, with the revolutionary new concepts in physics and cosmol-
ogy in addition to modem technology, increasing accuracy of timekeeping became
very important because it is the reference for the extremely complicated motions -
of the different parts of a machine for example - that have to work together in
coherence. The critical importance of timing events both on Earth and in space
was enhanced by precise timekeeping machines like electronic clocks, atomic
clocks, and pulsars which are fast-rotating stars that emit short radio pulses at
regular intervals with extremely high precision. But despite the new abstract con-
cepts about time like ‘time travel’ and the ‘curvature of time’ brought about by the
theory of Relativity, our modem concept of time has usually remained quite practi-
cal because everything has to be done according to the clock. In fact, the modem
theories of physics and cosmology have added more questions and paradoxes
about time than they answered (Grunbaum 1971: 195-230).
In general we can detect two major opposing views in the philosophy of time:
1 the rational (realistic) view based on the physical understanding of the
world
2 the idealistic (perhaps apparently ‘irrational’) view based on metaphysics.
Rationalists believe that the mind is the most powerful force of humankind and
is able to understand everything in the world, while the irrationalists consider the
world, including time, as something beyond the capabilities of our minds. For
the idealist, nothing, including time, exists independently of the mind. Therefore
the idealist believes that time is a construct of our mind and does not have a
separate existence.
Cosmology and time 1 7
1.6 Time in Greek philosophy
Since the age of Homer, the Greek word chronos has been used to refer to time.
Chronos was a Greek god who feared that his sons would take over his kingdom,
so he ate them one after the other - just like time, which brings things into exist-
ence and then overtakes them.
We can already detect two clearly opposing views about time in the contrast
between Plato’s and Aristotle’s schools of thought. Plato considers time to be
created with the world, while Aristotle believes that the world was created in
time, which is an infinite and continuous extension. Plato says: ‘Be that as it
may, Time came into being together with the Heaven, in order that, as they were
brought into being together, so they may be dissolved together, if ever their dis-
solution should come to pass’ (Comford 1997: 99).
Aristotle, however, believes that Plato’s proposition requires a point in time
that is the beginning of time and has no time before it. This notion is inconceiv-
able for Aristotle, who adopts Democritus’ notion of uncreated time and says: ‘If
time is eternal motion must also be eternal, because time is a number of motion.
Everyone except Plato has asserted the eternity of time. Time cannot have a limit
(beginning or end) for such a limit is a moment, and any moment is the begin-
ning of a future time and the end of past time’ (Lettinck 1994: 562).
Thus time for Aristotle is a continuum, and it is always associated with
motion; as such, it can not have a beginning (Lettinck 1994: 241-259, 361).
Plato, on the other hand, considers time as the circular motion of the heavens
(Comford 2004: 103), while Aristotle said that it is not motion, but rather the
measure of motion (Lettinck 1994: 351, 382, 390). Aristotle clearly relates
rational time and motion, but the problem that arises here is that time is uniform,
while some motions are fast and some slow. So we measure motion by time
because it is uniform - otherwise it cannot be used as a measure. To overcome
this objection, Aristotle takes the motion of the heavenly spheres as a reference,
and all other motions, as well as time, are measured according to this motion
(Badawi 1965: 90). On the other hand, Aristotle considers time as imaginary
because it is either past or future, and both do not exist, while the present is not
part of time because it has no extension (Lettinck 1994: 348).
We shall see in Chapter 2 that Ibn ‘Arabi shares with Aristotle the idea of a
circular endless time and that it is a measure of motion, but he does not consider
it as continuum. On the other hand, Ibn ‘Arabi agrees with Plato that time is
created with the world. In fact Plato was right when he considered time to be
created, but Aristotle refused this because he could not conceive of a starting
point to the world nor to time. Only after the theory of General Relativity in
1915, which introduced the idea of ‘curved time’, could we envisage a finite but
curved time that has a beginning. By this we could combine Plato’s and Aristo-
tle’s opposing views. However, Ibn ‘Arabi did that seven centuries before, and
he also explicitly spoke about curved time a long time before Einstein.
1 8 Cosmology and lime
1.7 Time in earlier Islamic philosophy
Muslim philosophers were in general greatly influenced by their Hellenistic
predecessors, and therefore tried to apply their theories of time in relation to the
related issues raised by the Qur’an and Prophetic Hadith. Many Muslim philoso-
phers prior to Ibn ‘Arabi, such as al-Kindi, al-Farabi, al-Razi, al-Ghazali, Ibn
Rushd (Averroes) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), analysed and criticized or adapted
the differing conceptions of time in the schools of Greek philosophy represented
by Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus (Badawi 1965).
For example, al-Ghazali, 12 in his famous Refutation of the Philosophers
( Tahafut al-Falasifa), 13 dealt with most of the standard philosophical and logical
arguments regarding time and creation, and his criticism was also thoroughly
discussed in Ibn Rushd’s famous philosophical rebuttal, the Tahafut al-Tahafut. 14
However, one of the most influential Muslim philosophers who had many origi-
nal views about time is Ibn Sina, who devoted long chapters in several works to
discussing time and related issues according to the views of kalam theology and
of previous philosophical schools. 15
Ibn Sina 16 started by summarizing the metaphysical positions of all previous
(Islamic and other) philosophers 17 and then criticizing their different ontological
views. Although Ibn Sina, like Aristotle, closely relates time and motion, he
stressed that motion is not the amount of time. He based his argument on the fact
that different distances can be cut in the same time, or that the same distance can
be done in different times, either owing to the difference in velocity or owing to
stops on the way. 18 But ultimately he does define time by motion, though he adds
distance to overcome Aristotle’s difficulty regarding periodicity (see previous
section). He says that time ‘is the number of motion when it separates into before
and after, not in time but in distance, otherwise it would have to be periodical’
(Nasr 1978: 224-226).
On the other hand, although Avicenna doubted the existence of physical time,
arguing that time ‘exists’ in the mind only as a result of to memory and expecta-
tion, he also showed that time is also real in the sense that it exists through
motion which relates to physical matter; time is real, but it does not have a stand-
alone essence, since it exists only through the motion of matter. 19 On the issue of
the structure of time, Ibn Sina affirms that it is a continuous quantity, since he
(like Aristotle) considers time to be the amount of circular motion which is con-
tinuous, and thus time is divided only by our mind’s illusion into ‘moments’ or
‘instants’ ianat). 10
On the other hand, the proponents of kalam theology, particularly the
Ash‘arites, 21 on the basis of their atomist view, consider time to be discrete, and
they also talked about the re-creation of the world in time. Ibn ‘Arabi acknowl-
edges the positive insights in their position, but he also criticized their view as
being incomplete (SPK: 97). We shall discuss Ibn ‘Arabi’s own view in detail in
sections 2.8 and 5.6 below.
At the earliest stage of Islamic philosophy, the philosopher and mathemati-
cian al-Kindi 22 was generally affected by Aristotle and adopted his view that
Cosmology and time 1 9
time is the number of motion. 23 However, arguing from the general Qur’anic
principle that Allah is the One Who created the world, he asserted that the mate-
rial world cannot exist ad infinitum because of the impossibility of an actual infi-
nite. Therefore, he argued, the world requires an initial ‘generator’ ( muhdith )
who could generate it ex nihilo.
The famous Muslim physician and Neoplatonist al-Razi, 24 on the other hand,
seems to have adopted Plato’s notion (in the Timaeus) that time is ‘the moving
form of eternity’, as well as Plotinus’ notion that time is eternal; therefore he
refused Aristotle’s view of the unreality of time.
The influential philosopher al-Farabi, 25 on his part, focused on the metaphysi-
cal aspects of time. He also adopted Aristotle’s view when he said: ‘only the cir-
cular motion is continuous and time is related to this motion’ (‘Abdul-Muta’al
2003: 113). But similarly to Ibn ‘Arabi, al-Farabi apparently also believed that
the world is contingent or ‘possible to exist’ before its actual existence. Other-
wise, if it were ‘impossible’ it would not exist, or if it were ‘necessary’, it would
have always been. Then he stresses that the world as a whole is in continuous
formation ( takwin ) and corruption (fasad) ‘in no time’, while the parts of the
world are forming and deforming in time (‘Abdul-Muta’al 2003: 115). This
outlook is also similar to Ibn ‘Arabi’s view (see section 2.3). To explain this
important point we give the following illustration. If a young physicist was asked
to describe the general state of a mountain, he or she might end up with
some equations without any reference to time, because the mountain is rigid.
But if we ask him or her to include in his study the fact that the mountain is part
of the Earth which is rotating around its axis and orbiting around the Sun,
and also the fact that the atoms in the rocks never rest, or even the motion of
the insects and other animals that might be living there, as well as the motions
of the wind, waters . . . etc. - then in that case the physicist might need to
invent some new mathematics in order to be able to include the time parameter
properly in his or her equations, even after making many approximations. So
because we live ‘inside’ the world we feel time, but the entire world itself is out
of time.
Many other schools of Islamic thought have speculated on the issue of time.
It is good to notice, however, that in the Qur’an itself Allah never makes any
direct reference to the usual Arabic word for ‘time’ ( zamdn or zaman), although
many other time-related terms later explored by Ibn ‘Arabi - such as the year
( sana and am), month ( shahr ), day (yawm/nahar ) and night (layl) - were men-
tioned very often in the Qur’an, in addition to some divine Names that are
related to time such as the First ( al-awwal ), the Last ( al-akhir ) and the Age ( al -
da hr).
As already noted in our Introduction, with all the hundreds of books and
recent studies that have been written about time in Islamic philosophy, both in
Arabic and in other languages, it is very strange almost none has ever focused on
Ibn ‘Arabi. Many scholars have studied and compared the different theological,
philosophical and physical views of time and existence, so briefly summarized
above. However, none of these studies has ever, to the best of our knowledge,
20 Cosmology and lime
treated Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique concept of time, although - as we shall discover -
it is actually the key to understanding his controversial theory of the oneness
of being. The reason for this strange neglect could be not only his difficult and
symbolic Sufi language but also the fact that his concepts are intentionally
dispersed throughout his many writings and not plainly stated in one place, as
most other authors do. In fact, Ibn ‘Arab! mentions in the Futuhat [1.141.13]
that he wrote a treatise with the title of ‘ al-zamdn ’ (‘time’) where we would
expect to read at least an extensive summary of his view of time. However,
apparently this precious work has been lost, although al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya
seems to include most of his doctrine regarding time and other related cosmo-
logical issues.
1.8 Time in Western philosophy
Aristotle’s notion of circular time, based on an eternal (uncreated) universe,
could not generally be accepted by most theologians of the three Abrahamic reli-
gions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - in so far as they considered time to be
linear, with a definite created beginning and end. St Augustine, and later Thomas
Aquinas, objected to Aristotle’s belief that time is circular, insisting instead that
human experience is a one-way journey from Genesis to Judgement, regardless
of any recurring patterns or cycles in nature. This latter view was later adopted
by Newton in 1687, when he represented time mathematically by using a line
rather than a circle.
As we noted above, there was already an earlier debate in Greek philosophy
as to whether time exists objectively, or is just constructed by our minds. Puzzled
about time, St Augustine concludes that time is nothing in reality, but it exists
only in the mind’s apprehension of that reality ( EP , ‘Time’, VIII: 126). On the
other hand, Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome both said that time exists in
reality as a mind-independent continuum, but is distinguished into earlier and
later parts only by the mind. Isaac Newton considered time (and space) as an
independent quantity that exists and flows regardless of matter or mind, a view
which Leibniz strongly criticized. Leibniz argued that if space is distinct from
everything in it, it would have to be completely uniform and homogeneous; thus
he reached the conclusion that it is unreal and relative, in anticipation of Ein-
stein’s Relativity, though he never put that insight into the form of mathematical
equations (Ross 1984: 47).
Newton also rejected Aristotle’s linkage between time and motion, when he
said that time is something which exists independently of motion and which
existed even before God’s creation. He argued that time, and space are an infi-
nitely large ‘container’ for all events, and that the container exists with or
without the events: this is called the ‘absolute’ theory of time. Leibniz, who
adopted the relational view, objected to that and argued that time is not an entity
existing independently of events.
In the eighteenth century, Kant said that our mind structures our perceptions
so that space always has a Euclidean geometry, and that time has the structure of
Cosmology and time 2 1
the infinite mathematical line (Kant 1998: 158-176). This view, however, lost its
mathematical support with the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries in the
1 820s. 26 In his Critique of Pure Reason , Kant presented, in the first antinomy,
two equally plausible arguments that at the end lead to opposing conclusions: the
first shows that the world had a beginning in time, while the other shows that the
world had no beginning in time. For the second proposition, if we suppose that
the world had no beginning in time, then this means that, at any particular
moment of time, an infinite number of events have passed - but infinity may
never be completed. On the other hand, if the world had a beginning in time,
then all previous times before that beginning have been blank, and there is no
any specific reason why the world should have begun at this time in particular.
(The same argument was earlier used by Leibniz in support of his relational
theory of time.) We shall see in section 2.3 how Ibn Arabi gets out of these
riddles by criticizing the questions themselves and asserting instead that Allah
created (and is continuously and recurrently creating, see section 5.6) the world
and time together (Kant 1998: 462^163, 470-476, 490-495, 525-528, 536-538).
In a famous article in Mind , McTaggart also argued about the unreality of
time. Events, for McTaggart, are capable of being ordered in two ways: either as
past-present-future, which he calls A-series, or as ‘earlier than’-Tater than’,
which he calls B-series. He then argues that A-series is contradictory, and that
B-series does not give all that is essential to time, because time also involves
change. The A-series view of time is contradictory because, as McTaggart
argues, it will lead to the fact that each event can be described (at different times)
by future, present and past, because events are always flowing from the future to
the past through the present, so at some times an event may be future then it
becomes present and then past; while in the B-series it is always before other
events or after other events, no matter whether those events are future, present or
past (Dyke 2002: 137-152).
On the other hand, there has also been a great debate as to whether time is
continuous or a discrete quantity. Most Western philosophers think of time as a
continuous quantity, but after the advent of Quantum Mechanics the idea of
quantum time was revived, although Quantum Theory itself does not consider
time to be ‘quantized’ (Mehlberg 1971: 16-71).
1.9 Time in modern science
Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity are the most well-established
modern fundamental theories of physics. According to these theories, space-time
is a collection of points called ‘space-time locations’ where physical events
occur. Space-time is a four-dimensional continuum, with physical time being a
distinguished, one-dimensional sub-space of this continuum, but no longer a sep-
arate entity nor space: space and time are always taken together as one entity.
In 1908, the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, Einstein’s teacher, was the
first person to realize that space-time is more fundamental than time or than
space alone. As he put it:
22 Cosmology and time
The views of space and time which 1 wish to lay before you have sprung
from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They
are radical. Henceforth space by itself and time by itself are doomed to fade
away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve
an independent reality.
(Pais 1982: 152)
The metaphysical assumption behind Minkowski’s remark is that what is inde-
pendently real is what does not vary from one reference frame to another. It
follows that the division of events into the past ones, the present ones and the
future ones is also not independently real.
In contrary to the classical Newtonian view, time intervals depend greatly on
the observer’s frame of reference. In classical mechanics, and on the basis of
common sense, if the time interval between two lightning flashes is 100 seconds
on someone’s clock, then the interval also is 100 seconds on your clock, even if
you are flying by at an incredible speed. Einstein rejected this piece of common
sense in his 1905 special theory of Relativity when he declared that the time
interval (and the distance) between two events depends on the observer’s refer-
ence frame. He says that every reference-body has its own particular time; unless
we are told the reference-body to which the statement of time refers, there is no
meaning in a statement of the time of an event (Einstein 1920: ch. 9). Thus each
reference frame (or reference-body) divides space-time differently into its time
part and its space part.
1. 9. 1 Curved time and the Big Bang
In 1922, the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann predicted from General
Relativity that the universe should be expanding. In 1929, Hubble’s measure-
ments of the redshift confirmed this prediction. Eventually astronomers con-
cluded that about 12 to 15 billion years ago the universe was in a state of infinite
density and zero size; this is the Big Bang theory referred to earlier in this
chapter. So we might ask the simple question ‘What was there before the Big
Bang?’ Astronomers, however, showed that the entire universe, including time
and space, was created in the Big Bang, and because of the extremely high
density of matter at that instant, the gravitational force was immense and the
space-time was curved, or encapsulated around the point from which the Big
Bang was ignited.
In physics and modem philosophy, descriptions of the Big Bang often assume
that a first event is also a first instant of time and that space -time did not exist
outside the Big Bang. But it is not clear if it is correct to call the Big Bang an
‘event’, because events must have space and time co-ordinates, but space-time
started with the Big Bang itself. However, for the first time in science there is a
mathematical description of the ontological relation between time and the uni-
verse. We shall see that this description is in good agreement with Ibn ‘Arabi’s
own views on time (section 2.3).
Cosmology and time 23
However, there are serious difficulties in defending the Big Bang’s implica-
tions about the universe’s beginning. Current theories do not have any claims as
to what might have happened before the Planck era (10 43 seconds after the Big
Bang). It is expected that the theory of Quantum Gravity might provide informa-
tion about that, and it may even allow physicists to speculate on what caused the
Big Bang. But until now this area remains solely in the domain of theological
and metaphysical speculation.
1.9.2 The arrow of time
Unlike physical space, physical time is inherently directional: it flows in one
direction, from the future to the past; this is a necessary truth. In thermodynam-
ics the arrow of time for the world is expressed through what is called the
‘entropy’, which is a description of the degree of order of a system; a highly
ordered system is said to have smaller entropy, and vice versa. The world’s
entropy is always increasing (i.e. its order is decreasing): this is a free ‘one-way
ticket’, and one has to pay dearly for the return. For example, the process of
mixing hot water into cold water to get warm water is never reversed, though in
principle we may think of some complicated machine that can do the reverse.
The arrow of an irreversible physical process is the way it normally goes, the
way it normally unfolds through time.
The problem with the arrow of time is that the variable time is symmetric in
most equations of physical laws. This means that, if the variable t is replaced by
its negative —t in those laws, the result is still a law; the basic equations are
unchanged. Some scientists theorize that the cosmological arrow of time will
one day reverse direction when the force of gravity will halt the further expan-
sion of the universe and start a collapse to its initial state, just like a movie
played backwards (Price 2002: 19-56).
1.9.3 Time travel
One of the most fascinating consequences of the theory of Relativity is that it
allows travel through time, just as one travels through distance. This has been
employed by science fiction to produce many interesting films and science
fiction stories.
Although reversing the direction of the ‘arrow of time’ still seems to be
experimentally impossible, this happens quite often in dreams and in remember-
ing past events. However, philosophers have been more interested in travel in
physical time than in psychological time. On the other hand, we can also ‘really’
look at the past any time: by looking at the stars, where we actually see how they
have been thousands and millions of years ago when the light that we see now
was actually emitted by them. But this is still not like travel in physical time,
which is conceivable now only in theoretical cosmology.
Although travel in time is possible and allowed according to the equations of
Relativity, in many cases it violates logic and causes obvious paradoxes. There
24 Cosmology and lime
are, however, different types of time travel, some of which are trivial. If you get
on a plane on the Earth’s surface and travel west, you will cross a time zone and
instantly go back an hour, but all you have done is to change your reference
frame. Also, if your body were quick-frozen in the year 2000 and thawed in
2050, then you would travel forward 50 years in clock time but only a few
seconds of your biological time. This is, however, just a case of biological time
travel, not a case of physical time travel.
One possible, and more genuine, way to travel through time is to fly at enor-
mous speeds close to the speed of light. Einstein showed that travel forward in
physical time is possible relative to the time of those who move more slowly
than you. With this kind of relativistic time travel, you cannot return to the old
present, but you can conceivably be present at the birth of your great-grandchil-
dren. Travel backward in physical time is also possible only if nothing that has
happened gets changed. For example, you cannot go back in time and prevent
your parents from having any children (Arntzenius and Maudlin 2002:
169-200).
Another kind of time travel is caused by the curvature of time due to extreme
gravity. If you fell into a black hole, then you would travel to a time after the
end of the universe, as measured in a reference frame tied to Earth. Unlike the
time travel in science fiction movies, this kind of relativistic time travel to the
future is continuous, not abrupt. That is, as you travel to the future, you exist at
all intervening times according to the stationary Earth clock. You do not sud-
denly ‘poof into existence in the year 4500; you existed during their year 4499,
but your spaceship had not yet landed.
Going back to the past is probably possible, but there are significant difficul-
ties yet to be overcome before we can be sure. In recent decades, mathematicians
and theoretical physicists have described time machines, or at least universes
containing backward time travel, that are consistent with Einstein’s equations of
general relativity. However, Stephen Hawking believes that all these time
machines are nded out by the laws of General Relativity.
For Ibn ‘Arabi, time travel is possible and easily attainable without any para-
doxical consequences. Such time travel, however, has no physical or biological
effects on the traveller - see the discussion in section 2.7 below.
1.9.4 Quantum time
Regarding the question of ‘instants’ of time, time being a linear continuum
implies that there is a non-denumerable infinity of them. This means that
between any two instants there is a third; time is continuous. However, for times
shorter than about 10 -43 seconds, the so-called Planck time, science has no exper-
imental support that time holds its continuousness. But physicists agree that
General Relativity must fail for durations shorter than the Planck time, 27 though
they do not know exactly how and what is the substitute.
The idea that space or time (space-time) could be discrete has been recurring
in scientific literature recently, but its origins go back to ancient philosophies.
Cosmology and time 25
The new concepts brought about by Quantum Mechanics (e.g. the concept of
indeterminacy or the uncertainty principle) suggested that space-time could be
also quantized like energy. This was reinforced by the discovery of ultraviolet
divergences in Quantum Field Theory (Zee 2003: 145-151), though many of the
strange quantum concepts soon became acceptable aspects of continuum physics.
In the 1980s, powerful computers inspired some new discrete thinking in
physics. Complicated mathematical simulations performed on these super-com-
puters paved the way for lattice theories to be applied to Quantum Mechanics,
and included Quantum Gravity. In Quantum Gravity, Planck’s length is a
minimum size beyond which no accurate measurements can be performed.
Hawking, however, sees no reason to abandon the continuum theories that
have been so successful. But it may be possible to invent a discrete structure of
space-time without abandoning the continuum theories if the discrete-continuum
duality can be resolved, just as the wave-particle duality has been resolved by
Quantum Mechanics. 28
The practical methods of the quantization of time in modern scientific theo-
ries are based on some complicated mathematics such as lattice theories and cel-
lular automata that are beyond the scope of this introduction (Wolfram 2002:
771). But it is good to note here that Ibn ‘Arabi’s quantization of time, as we
shall see in section 2.8, is unique and is based on a broader cosmological view
(of the oneness of being) such that discreteness and continuousness are special
cases of it (see also section 7.5).
1.10 Introducing Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of time
As we shall see in Chapter 2, Ibn ‘Arabi considers time to be imaginary and
without real existence; it is only a tool used by the mind to chronologically
arrange events and the motion of the heavenly spheres and physical objects. Ibn
‘Arabi then distinguishes between two kinds of time: ‘natural time’ and ‘para-
natural time’. He also explains that the origin of this ultimately imaginary time
is from the two forces of the soul: the active force and the intellective force.
Despite time being imaginary, Ibn ‘Arabi considers it as one of the four main
constituents of nature: time, space, the monad ( al-jawhar ), and the form {al-
‘arad). Like some modern theories, Ibn ‘Arabi also considers time to be cyclic,
relative and inhomogeneous.
Ibn ‘Arabi then gives a precise definition of the ‘day’, the ‘daytime’ and the
‘night’ and generalizes that, in relation to all (real and imaginary) orbs or
spheres, every orb has its own ‘day’ and those days are measured by our normal
day that we count on the Earth.
On the other hand, Ibn ‘Arabi gives special importance to the cosmic ‘Week’,
and says that the seven cosmic week-Days are unique and not alike. Saturday
(i al-sabt ) in particular has a special importance, because he considers it to be the
‘ Day of eternity’, so that the observable week days, including Saturday itself, are
therefore happening in Saturday! This initially may look rather confusing, but it
should become easier to understand, especially after we explain Ibn ‘Arabi’s
26 Cosmology and time
view of the re-creation principle and his theory of the oneness of being which we
discuss in detail in Chapter 5.
Finally, what is very important and unique about his view of time is that Ibn
‘Arab! considers time to be discrete: there is a minimum indivisible ‘day’ or
‘time’ - and thus, surprisingly, this ‘day’ is equal to the normal day itself which
we live and divide into hours, minutes, seconds and much less than that! This
conception at first looks very strange and ambiguous, but, in order to explain
this, lbn ‘Arabi introduces three kinds of days, depending on the actual flow of
time that is not so uniform and smooth as we ordinarily imagine. The key point
here is that lbn ‘Arabi stresses that, according to the Qur’an, only one ‘ evenf
should be happening every ‘day’ (of the actual days), and not many different
events as we observe. To achieve his deeper understanding of this key Qur’anic
expression, he reconstructs the underlying reality of the normal days in a special
way from the different days of the actual flow of time, as we shall discuss further
in Chapter 4.
Also on the basis of a number of key verses in the Qur’an, Ibn ‘Arabi says
that the world ceases to exist instantly and intrinsically the next moment right
after its creation, and then it is re-created again and again. We shall see that Ibn
‘Arabi’s view of time and how it flows is precise and unique; it has never been
suggested or discussed by any other philosopher or scientist. This distinctive
cosmic vision of ‘ever-renewed creation’, when added to the understanding of
the actual flow of time based on the three kinds of days alluded to above, can be
used to build a new unique model of the cosmos which we shall discuss in
Chapter 6 and we shall discuss some of the consequences of this model in
Chapter 7.
2 General aspects of Ibn ‘Arabi’s
concept of time and days
Time, if you investigate what it comes down to, is something verifiable;
Yet it is known (only) through (human) imaginations ( awhdm ),
Its power is like Nature in its effects,
Though the essence of both is non-existing. 1
Through it all things are determined,
While it itself has no existing essence by which it could be judged.
[ 1 . 291 . 1 - 7 ]
We have seen in the previous chapter that time is one of the most important per-
ennial problems in physics and cosmological philosophy. For the same reason,
we find that Ibn ‘Arabi considers that a good understanding of time is the prime
key to human spiritual realization. In this chapter we shall look at the various
relevant aspects of Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of time. We want to give here some general
descriptions of his ideas on time, and we shall focus on the important issues in
the following chapters. For this reason there are many cross-references to fol-
lowing chapters where these ideas are explained in more detail.
2.1 What is time?
To start with, Ibn ‘Arabi declares that time is an imagined attribute that does not
exist on its own; it has no separate physical or non-physical entity. He argues
that ‘time in relation to us is like eternity in relation to Allah, and since eternity
is a negative attribute 2 that does not exist on its own, so time in relation to the
contingent world or the entire cosmos is (also) an imagined attribute that does
not exist’ [1.291.28].
In his major book Al-Futuhdt Al-Makkiyya, he says: ‘we showed in this book
and in our book The Time ( al-zamdn ) (OY, no. 838) that time is something that
has no (real) existence’ [1.490.17]. Although this last book is not found today,
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time is developed in quite detailed fashion in the
Futiihat, though it is scattered all around the book and not placed in specific
parts, including even those chapters 59, 291 and 390 whose titles relate directly
to time.
28 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
The concept of time is needed to compare the sequence of events or motion,
but real existence is attributed only to the thing that actually moves, not to the
abstractions of motion, time or space in which motion is observed:
And time and space are also a consequence of natural bodies, but time is
something imagined that does not exist (in itself), but is introduced by the
motion of orbs and localized things when we ask about them ‘when’. So
time and space do not exist in reality, but existence is to the things that move
and still.
[11.458. 1]
This is not only to say that ‘motion’, ‘space’ and ‘time’ do not have real physical
existence, but they do not even exist separately in an abstract way: their exist-
ence is a mere illusion; it is only a projection of the human imagination ( wahm ).
It is not very easy to deny the existence of time, space and motion, since they
are widely encountered in our experience of everyday life. However, Ibn ‘Arabi
is not the first one to propose this. We shall see below that Aristotle gives a very
simple proof that time is not real. The real existence of motion and space,
however, are far more unusual and intricate to disprove. Perhaps only Zeno (b.
c. 488 bc) was brave enough to postulate the illusion of motion, and he composed
many related riddles that are still logically unsolvable. The main idea behind Ibn
‘Arabi’s mysterious conceptions here is his controversial theory of the oneness
of being, which we shall discuss throughout this book, especially in Chapter 5.
But, clearly, if we suppose that the ‘real’ existence in the world is uniquely one,
there would be no meaning to motion, and hence to time and space; or at least
they would have to be redefined. We shall discuss in Chapter 7 that Zeno’s para-
doxes can be easily resolved according to Ibn ‘Arabi’s profound view of time
under his theory of the oneness of being.
Coming back to time, we can say that it can be very easily shown that it is in
fact imaginary. Aristotle says in his Physics that ‘time consists of two parts, one
of which has existed (and gone, i.e. the past), the other does not yet exist (i.e. the
future), so how can something exists which is composed of what does not exist?’
(Lettinck 1994: 348)
So if there is a real existence to time it will be in the present (the ‘now’), not
the past or the future. Aristotle then gives another argument that also the ‘now’
is not time. The present is not time, but it is rather a point in imaginary time, like
a point on the line; although the line is composed of points, still each point is not
a line. 3 Likewise time is the sum of all present moments that exist only one by
one, and each one present moment (alone) is not time. Time therefore is the
mind’s projection on the continuous presence from the future to the past through
the present.
Similarly, Ibn ‘Arabi gives a straightforwardly profound meaning of time. In
the title of chapter 390 of the Futuhat , he says: ‘the time of a thing is its pres-
ence’ [III. 546. 16]. Then he explains that the time of the Lord is the ‘servant’ and
the time of the servant is the Lord ( al-rabb ) [III. 547. 31], because the Lord
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 29
deserves to be given this name by the servant, since He would not be called
‘Lord’ if there are no servants to worship Him; likewise the servant deserves his
name by (his relation to) the Lord. In the same way, when we say for example:
“Amr is the son of Zaid’, this means, according to lbn ‘Arabi, that the time of
the fatherhood of ‘Amr is the sonhood of Zaid, and vice versa. Or in Ibn ‘Arabi’s
own words: ‘the time of the father is the son, and the time of the son is the
father’ [III. 547. 36]. That is why Ibn ‘Arabi gave this chapter (390) the title ‘The
time of a thing is its presence, but 1 am out of time and You are out of time, so I
am Your time and You are my time’. This means: ‘I am Your presence and You
are my presence.’
‘Time’ in the usual common sense is actually a tool used by our perception to
classify the events or motion of objects chronologically; it would not have any
meaning without motion or change. This is why we do not feel time while we
are asleep; we have to look for some kind of a standard reference motion (the
Sun, the Moon, the stars or a watch) in order to realize how much of time has
elapsed since we went into deep sleep. Time, therefore, has no real absolute
meaning; it is only used relative to something in order to describe its state of
existence. This is why lbn ‘Arabi sometimes uses the words ‘time’ and ‘state’ as
synonyms, as when he says: ‘as you like (you can) say from the time of its exist-
ence, or the state ( hal ) of its existence’ [II. 281.1 1].
So the real meaning of time is reduced to the existence of the world in the
‘present moment’, which has no duration or extension, because the future and
the past are mere imagination. If we know that, lbn ‘Arabi declares, there is no
problem to go along with people and say that ‘time’ is the daytime and night, or
that it is a duration taken by the motion of objects, or it is comparing an event to
another when someone asks about it by ‘when?’, because these definitions have
been widely used and they are correct in relation to time, in the common sense
[III. 548. 7]. As Ibn ‘Arabi says in chapter 59 of the Futuhat, which is titled ‘On
knowing existing and assumed time’, people have used the word ‘time’ ( zamanf
in many different ways: most philosophers, for example, use it as the duration
taken by the motion of orbs. Muslim theological scholars, on the other hand, use
it to order events sequentially. But generally zaman in Arabic means the night-
time ( layl ), and the daytime ( nahar ). Also Ibn ‘Arabi himself sometimes uses the
word zaman to mean the daytime and night [1.141.5]. But this is more than just a
convention, because, as we shall see below and in the following chapter, the
(divine) ‘day’ (j>awm) is for him the main indivisible unit of time. So if time has
any real existence it exists as the divine ‘days’ (of each real instant), not as the
hours or seconds we conventionally use. It is also worth mentioning here that,
unlike the day (yaxvm) or daytime (nahar) and the night (layl), the word ‘time’
(zaman ox zaman) was never used in the Qur’an.
Despite the fact that he considers time to be imagined and having no real
existence, Ibn ‘Arabi stresses that it is one of the four ‘mothers (fundamental
principles) of existence’: the formable monad (al-jawhar al-snwar f), 5 the acci-
dental fonn (al- ‘arad), 6 time (al-zaman) and space (al-makan). 7 Everything else
in the manifest world is combined of these four parameters [III.404.22]. He also
30 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
argues that those four parameters - together with another six categories that are
derived from them: fa'il, munfa'il, idafa, wad', ‘adad, kayf - are enough to
describe the state of everything in the world. Together these make up the famil-
iar ten Aristotelian categories: i.e. substance (jawhar), quantity ( kamm ), quality
(kayf), relation (idafa), time (matd), place (ayna), situation or position ( wad ' ),
possession (lahu), or state (Jidda), passion (yanfa'il ) and action (yaf'al ) -
although the meaning of jawhar here is of course radically different from its
usual Aristotelian usage, reflecting in this case the kalam inspiration of Ibn
‘Arabi’s terminology (El 2 , VI: 203, ‘Al-Makfdat’, and: EP, II: 46, ‘Categories’).
Yet those four ‘mothers of existence’, including the formable monad, in Ibn
‘Arabi’s distinctive conception of the oneness of being, are nothing but imagi-
nary forms or reflections of the unique ‘Single Monad’ (al-jawhar al-fard) which
is the only thing that can be described as having a real existence: all other things
in the world are different forms of this Single Monad, including ‘vision and the
visible, hearing and the heard, imagination and the imaginable, thinking and the
thinkable, . . . etc.’ [111.404.12]. This latter concept reflects Ibn ‘Arabi’s contro-
versial theory of the oneness of being.
The importance of understanding the reality of time is, therefore, to provide
the link between the actual unity of this Single Monad and the apparent multi-
plicity of the witnessed world. That is why Ibn ‘ Arabi says that:
the knowing of time is a noble knowing through which eternity (al-azal) is
truly known. . . . But only the Solitary Sages 8 among ‘the True Men’ know
it (eternity). This (reality) is known as ‘the First Age’ (al-dahr al-awwal) or
‘the Age of ages’ (dahr al-duhur). From this eternity (al-azal), time comes
into existence.
[1.156.34-157.1]
Therefore, we may summarize that time as we ordinarily experience it is defined
by motion, and motion is defined by the different positions of the formable
monads, and those monads are different states (times or instances) or forms of
the Single Monad, which alone has a real existence.
2.2 Physical time and spiritual time
Ibn ‘Arabi distinguishes between two kinds of time: physical or ‘natural time’
(zaman tabi'i) and spiritual or ‘para-natural time’ (zaman fawq-tabVi). The first
is used to compare the motion of bodies and orbs, while the latter is used to
compare the changes in spiritual states, such as realizing and knowing. He
explains that the existence of time does not necessarily require the existence of
matter [IV. 337. 5], because there is time that is associated with material motion
that is under the effect of Nature, and time that is associated with immaterial
motion that is above the effect of Nature: i.e. in the spiritual world. Thus he says
that ‘you should know that some of time is above Nature and some of it is below
Nature’ [1.377.12], and he explains further by saying that the time that is under
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 31
Nature ‘is defined by the motion of orbs . . . and the time that is beyond Nature is
defined by (spiritual) states’ [1.477.12]. So when lbn ‘Arabi says: ‘and the origin
of the existence of time is Nature, whose state is below the Universal Soul and
above the Universal Dust’ [III. 548. 19], this actually refers to natural time which
is used to compare the motion of bodies and orbs - while spiritual time is used
to compare the change of spiritual states, and its origin preceded the existence of
the physical world.
We can fairly say that lbn ‘Arabi’s conception of natural time is the time
known in physics and cosmology, and that his spiritual time resembles what is
called by many modern philosophers ‘psychological time’. The psychological
time is our feeling of time’s passage even when everything around us is standing
still, including ourselves: we feel this time because our inner state is continu-
ously being updated through changes in our consciousness, unless we fall into
deep sleep, as happened for example with the ‘people of the cave’ ( ahl al-kahf)
who stayed over three hundred years in deep sleep, yet when they awoke they
thought it was like a day or part of a day (Qur’an 18:9-25, see also [II. 9. 21]).
Physical time seems to flow uniformly and continuously (at least locally),
while psychological time depends greatly on the mood, as lbn al-Farid suggested
nicely in one of his poems:
With her for me a year is like a glimpse,
and an hour of parting for me is like a year.
(Mahmud 1995: 344)
Also lbn ‘Arabi says that ‘minutes are years while sleeping’ [IV. 337.1], and we
shall discuss this relative aspect of ‘para-natural’, psychic time in section 2.7.
2.3 The origin of the world
Many people ask questions like ‘what is the age of the universe?’ or ‘when did
the world begin?’ And many cosmologists go along with these questions and
give estimates for the age of the physical universe (today, usually about 15
billion years). Any answers to such questions will quickly lead to a modern
version of the still-ongoing debate between Plato’s and Aristotle’s schools
already mentioned in Chapter 1: i.e. whether time was created in or before the
world, or vice versa; or whether they are both eternal. Many riddles and para-
doxes quickly emerge out of this debate. For example, one may ask: if the world
started at a certain point of time, why God chose that time in particular? Could
the world have been created ten minutes before or after that designated time?
And what was God doing or what was happening before the beginning of the
world?
Ibn ‘Arabi, however, shows that such questions are meaningless, because the
world is created out of time, and time itself is part of that created world. Allah
did not create the world in time, because nothing existed ‘before’ the world apart
from Him Who is also out of time, and therefore the creation of the world can
32 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
not be compared to other events in time. The existence of the Creator precedes
the existence of the world logically, and not chronologically, so it is like when
we say ‘the day starts when the Sun rises’: there is no duration of time that sepa-
rates sunrise from the start of the day [1. 100.26, Al-Masa ’il, no. 25], but logically
the day would not start if the Sun did not rise. The existence of Allah, Who is
Pre-Existent ( Qadim or Azali) and Self-Existent ( Qayyum ), is a precondition -
not a cause - for the existence of the world. Therefore, because the world was
created out of time (not ‘in’ time), the above questions are invalid. All such
questions use time phrases that have no meaning outside of that time which
appeared in or with the world and not before it.
Ibn ‘Arabi showed this clearly by explaining that:
The fact of the matter is that the existence of the Real is not determined
(temporally or causally) by the existence of the world: not temporally
before, with, or after, because temporal or spatial precedence with relation
to Allah is confronted by the realities confronting whoever speaks about it
factually - unless they say something by the way of illumination, as had
been said by the Messenger, peace be upon him, or it was expressed in the
(divine) Book. For not everyone is able to experience the unveiling of these
realities. We can only say that the Exalted Real exists by Himself and for
Himself; His existence is absolute, is not confined by any other than Him,
and is not caused by something nor is He the cause of anything - But He
is the Creator of causes and results, the King, the Most-Holy One (59:23),
Who always is and has been.
The world exists through Allah, not by itself or for itself. Therefore the
existence of the Real Who exists by Himself is a determining condition for
the existence of the world, which would not exist at all without the existence
of the Real. And since time can not exist without the existence of the Real
and the (divine) Source ( mabda ’) of the world, therefore the world comes to
exist ‘in other-than-time’. So actually we can not say, in the true reality of
things, that Allah existed before the world - because it has been established
that ‘before’ is a time phrase, and there was no ‘time’ (before the existence
of the world). Nor can we say that the world existed after the existence of
the Real, since there is nothing (other than the Real) ‘after’ or ‘with’ the
existence of the Real, because He caused (everything else) to exist and is
making it and originating it (in the words of a famous hadith) ‘while there
was no thing (with Him)’.
So as we said, the Real exists by Himself and the world exists through
the Real. But if someone governed by his imagination ( wahm ) should ask
‘When was the world (created) after the Real?’ we would say that ‘when’ is
a time-question. But time belongs to the realm of relations (nisab, see: SDK:
35) and (as such) is created by Allah, but not like the creation of existence,
because the realm of relations is created by (our human) ‘estimation’ (or
consideration: taqdir), not by the creation of what exists . . . Therefore this
question is not valid. So you should be careful how you ask, and do not be
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 33
veiled by the tools of (conventional human) expression from actually realiz-
ing and fully comprehending these realities in yourself.
So the only thing left is: (1) a pure and absolute Existence - not (one
coming into existence) after non-existence - and that is the existence of the
Real, may He be exalted! And (2) an existence (that only comes to be) after
the non-existence of the essence of that existent thing itself - and that is the
existence of the world. So there is not any comparability or (co-extensive)
extension between those two existences, apart from that imagined, presumed
one that is removed by (true) knowledge. So nothing is left of that (falsely
supposed comparability of God and the world) but absolute Existence (of
God) and determined existence (of the world), Active Existence (of God)
and passive existence (of the world). This is what is given by the realities,
and peace (i.e. that’s all!).
[1.90.9, see also Al-Masa’il, no. 90]
‘The world’ for Ibn ‘Arabi is both spiritual and material, and as we have seen
above there are two corresponding kinds of time, spiritual and physical. The
spiritual world preceded the creation of the material universe (nature) as we
know it (stars and planets), so there was spiritual time before the creation of the
physical world. He indicates that spiritual time is necessary to describe the rela-
tion between spirits and the divine Names before the creating of the physical
world. So in this respect Ibn ‘Arabi does respond to the above-mentioned ques-
tioning about what was ‘before’ the creation of the physical world, 9 but he still
considers such questioning invalid beyond these two created realms of the world.
In fact Ibn ‘Arabi explains that the world has three distinctive ontological
‘levels’: ‘alam al-imilk or ‘alam al-shahada, which is the visible world; ‘alam
al-malakut, which is the realm of meanings; and ‘alam al-jabanit, which is the
all-encompassing realm of the divine ‘Imagination’ ( barzakh ) [1.54.15,
11.129.16]. But here and elsewhere he sometimes adapts the simplified reference
(drawn from the Qur’an) to the two domains as the ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ (see
SPK : 14, 93, 129, 218, 223, 342, 360-361, 376, and also Al-Masd'il, no. 150).
Actually, Ibn ‘Arabi considers the age of the world (as spiritual and material
together) to be infinite from both directions: i.e. it has always been and it will
always be; it is eternal without beginning and eternal without end. However, this
is not saying that the material (and even the spiritual) world is eternal, but the
world has some sort of pre-existence in the foreknowledge of Allah, and Allah’s
knowledge is eternal in both directions. In addition, Ibn ‘Arabi also considers
those two ends to coincide with each other, so time as a whole is like a circle
that can not be described to have a beginning or an end, but when we set a point
(the present) and a direction (to the past or future) on this circle we define a
beginning and an end [1.387.32, III. 546. 30]. We shall discuss the concept of cir-
cular and cyclical time in section 2.10.
Ibn ‘Arabi - following Ibn Sina’s familiar theological categories (Nasr 1964:
173-274) - divides all things, in terms of their type of existence, into three inclu-
sive categories: necessary, possible (or ‘contingent’: mumkin), and impossible
34 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
[11.293. 1, 11.575-576]. Only Allah’s existence is described as ‘Necessary’ or
Self-Existent, while absolute non-existence is impossible. The world, on the
other hand, is called ‘possible’ because it is possible to exist, but in order to
actually come into existence it needs a determining cause ( murajjih ) who has to
be pre-existent and self-existent, or none other than Allah. 10 Therefore, the world
(the possible) is originally non-existence (but not absolute non-existence, only a
non-existence that is possible to exist) and it is always in need of Allah in order
to bring it into existence. Thus it can be said - as in the long quotation above -
that it exists by or through Allah, and not through itself. The difference between
absolute non-existence and possible non-existence is that the latter exists (even
before it comes into real existence) in Allah’s Knowledge, and this foreknowl-
edge is eternal because His knowledge is not other than Himself [1.300.32,
II. 1 14.15] (see also section 2.7).
So the world, spatial and temporal, eternally existed or was determined in
Allah’s knowledge, but it is continuously brought into real existence ad
infinitum'.
So when Allah brought the entities (into existence), He brought them for
them not for Him. But (for Him) they are still as they were on their spatial
and temporal states, with their different time and space (co-ordinates). So
He reveals to them their entities and states little by little infinitely and suc-
cessively. So the issue for Allah is one, as He said: and Our Command is
but one, as the twinkling of an eye (54:50), and multiplicity is (only) for the
countables themselves.
[1.162.22]
However, despite this pre-existence, we can not say that the world is eternal and
only developed from one state to another. It is not exactly clear how Henry
Corbin concluded that ‘there is no place in Ibn ‘Arabi’s thinking for creation ex
nihilo, an absolute beginning preceded by nothing’ (Corbin 1969: 200), when
Ibn ‘Arabi started the Futuhat by saying: ‘Praise be to Allah Who created things
after (its being) non-existence’ [1.2.3]. In Al-Durrat Al-Bayda’ he also declares
that ‘the dependent existence (the possible) may only be after non-existence,
otherwise it would not be a “possible” whereas it is possible, and it would not be
an existence by the Self-Existent, while it is in fact an existence by the Self-
Existent Who caused it to exist’ (Al-Durrat Al-Bayda’ \ 133).
If Corbin means what we explained in the previous paragraph - i.e. that eve-
rything existed in the foreknowledge of Allah even before it really existed in the
world - then we have to stress the difference between the essence or entity ( ‘ayn)
of a thing in God’s Knowledge and its actual existence. William Chittick devoted
a full chapter in his book The Sufi Path of Knowledge to explaining this impor-
tant concept in Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontology ( SPK : 77-143). The entities of the world
are in Allah’s foreknowledge eternally, but they are brought into existence -
after they were not existing - one after the other. This is a very important dis-
tinction. Ibn ‘Arabi continues by explaining that:
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 35
Everything is in need of Allah, the Exalted, for the existence of its essence
(or entity: ‘ayn), not for its essence, because its immutable essence ( ‘aymihu
al-thdbita, most widely translated as ‘permanent archetype’, see SPK: 83) is
not determined in its immutability; it is not determined by a determiner, for
there is no determination in eternity ... so the existence of the possible may
only be after non-existence, which means it was not, and then it is.
(Al-Durrat Al-Bayda’\ 133, see also Al-Masd’il, no. 143)
Actually we shall see later in section 5.6 that this intrinsic need by the ‘possible’
- i.e. of all the realms of creation - for Allah to bring it into existence continues
to be necessary at every single moment, because the world is continuously
brought into existence in ever-renewed forms (i.e. it is constantly ''re-created’).
However, it is still not easy for the human mind to imagine the existence of
the created world ( al-mnhdath ) and the eternal existence of Allah, the Eternal or
Pre-existent ( al-qadim ) without a reflection of some time separation. And even
for Ibn ‘Arabi the issue is not yet closed. As he suggested in the long passage
quoted above, somehow understanding this mysterious point seems to be beyond
normal human perception and requires a divinely inspired knowledge accessible
only to rare individuals with the very highest spiritual attainments. This same
difficulty caused many Muslim philosophers and other theologians to continue
to speculate on many theories that Ibn ‘Arabi disagrees with (Kitdb Al-Azal: 8).
Ibn ‘Arabi explains further the relation between the existence of God and the
existence of the world in chapter 59 of the Futuhat, which is the same chapter in
which he talks specifically about the topic of time. Ibn ‘Arabi’s argument pre-
sented at the beginning of this chapter is extremely complicated and very diffi-
cult to understand, even in its original language. However, because of its
importance, we are obliged to translate it here, with some necessary explanations
in parentheses.
At the beginning of chapter 59, after the opening poem quoted at the very
beginning of this chapter, Ibn ‘Arabi says:
You should know first that Allah, the Exalted, is the First ( al-awwal ), and
there is no firstness ( awwaliyya ) to anything before Him nor to anything else
- whether that exists through Him or independent of Him - with Him: but
He is the One (i.e. the Unique; al-wahid), Glory be to Him, in His Firstness.
So there is nothing that is self-existent apart from Him, because He is the
All-Sufficient (al-ghani) in Himself, absolutely, and Independent of all other
beings. He said: and Allah is Self-Sufficient with respect to all the worlds
(3:97), and this is true according to both the intellect and revelation.
Therefore, the existence of the world came about by Allah either for
Himself or for ‘other’ than Himself. Because if this ‘other’ was Himself it
would not be ‘other’, and also if this ‘other’ was Himself He would be nec-
essarily composed in Himself and the firstness would be to this ‘other’;
therefore this would violate our previous statement that there is no firstness
to anything with or before Allah.
36 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
So if this ‘other’ is not Himself, then it would be either existence or non-
existence. But it is impossible to be non-existence, because non-existence
can not bring the world (from its non-existence) into existence because there
is no any priority to any one of them (i.e. the world and this ‘other’ that is
non-existence) to come into existence, since both of them are non-existence,
and non-existence has no effect because it is null.
On the other hand, this ‘other’ can not be existence, because then it either
exists by itself or not (i.e. through something else). And it is impossible that
this ‘other’ exists by itself, since it has already been proved that there can
not be two self-existent beings.
So it remains that this ‘other’ exists by something else, and the meaning
of the possibility of the world is nothing but that it exists by something else.
Therefore this ‘other’ is the world or (some part) of the world.
Also, if the existence of the world by Allah is due to ‘something’ without
which the world would not exist - whether this ‘something’ is called ‘will’
{irada), ‘wish’ (mashV u)\ ‘knowledge’ ( 7/m) or anything you want which
is required by the ‘possible’ in order to exist - then the Real would not (be
able to) do anything without this ‘something’. But that implies nothing but
needfulness, which is impossible for Allah, because Allah is absolutely Self-
Sufficient, since He is, as He said: Self-sufficient (Independent) with respect
to all the worlds (3:97). And if it is claimed that this ‘something’ is the
Essence Himself, then we say that it is impossible for anything to be
‘in need of itself, and since He is Self-sufficient in Himself, then this
(false supposition) would lead to the same contradiction - i.e. being Self-
sufficient and yet needful in Himself at the same time - and all this
is impossible.
Therefore, since we have already disproved the existence of any ‘other’
(determining cause of the existence of the world), we conclude that the
existence of the world, inasmuch as it exists through something else, is
(causally) related to the Necessarily Self-Existent ( wajib al-wujud li-nafsihi :
i.e. Allah or the Real), and that the essence ( ‘ayri) of the ‘possible’ itself is
the locus for the effect of the Necessarily Self-Existent’ s bringing the possi-
ble into existence. It can only be properly comprehended like this.
Hence (such intrinsic distinctions as God’s) ‘Wish’ ( mashi’a ), ‘Will’
{irada), ‘Knowledge’ ( ‘ilm) and ‘Ability’ ( qudra ) are (all) Himself - may
He be exalted far above any multiplicity within Himself! Indeed His is abso-
lute Unicity, and [in the words of the famous Sura 1 12, al-Ikhlas ] He ‘is the
One {al-Wahid), the Unique ( al-Ahad ), Allah the one on Whom all depend
(al-Samad); He did not give birth - for then He would be a preceding
(cause); nor is He born - since He would then be a result; nor is there any
“other" equivalent (kuf) to Him ’ - for in that case the existence of the
world would be the result of two preceding causes, the Real and Its ‘equiva-
lent’ - may Allah be exalted (above that)! So this is how He described
Himself in His Book when the Prophet, peace be upon him, was asked to
describe his Lord: then He sent down the Sura al-Ikhlas (just quoted here)
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 37
(according to the circumstances described in a hadith: Kanz, 4734) to get rid
of all (supposed) sharing {shirk) with other than Allah, by those high quali-
ties and descriptions. So there is nothing Allah negates in this Sura or
approves, but those negations or approbations are some people’s opinions
about Allah.
[1.291.8]
The importance of this long paragraph comes from the fact that it shows the
basis of Ibn ‘Arabi’s distinctive view of creation, the distinctive - and extremely
controversial - view that many scholars have traditionally called ‘the oneness of
being {wahdat al-wujud)’, but which has been widely misunderstood. Ibn ‘Arabi
himself could not describe it plainly, simply because it is a reality whose direct
perception depends not on logic, but - as Ibn ‘Arabi stressed in the passage
quoted at the end of section 2.1 - on a rare inspired experiential ‘tasting’
restricted to the spiritual elite of the ‘Solitary Ones’. As soon as it is spoken, it is
likely to be misunderstood. What Ibn ‘Arabi tries to prove in the passages just
quoted, as in many chapters of the Futuhat and other books, is that the existence
of the world is solely dependent on the existence of the Real, Who is One and
Unique - and that this ultimate dependence of the world on the Real is an essen-
tial property that accompanies everything in the world at all times. On the other
hand, nothing was added to Allah through His creating the world, as for Him (in
His Knowledge) the world is as if it is always there. We shall come back to this
important issue of the oneness of being (especially in Chapter 5) as we continue
our exploration of Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of time, because it is truly the key to under-
standing his cosmology and theology.
2.4 The origin of time?
If we can not speak about the origin of the world in time, we can still ask about
the origin of time in the world. As Ibn ‘Arabi pointed out, we can not ask when
time began, because the word ‘when’ requires time to be defined beforehand.
But we can ask how did time begin?
In response to this cosmological question, Ibn ‘Arabi argues that both the
natural and para-natural types of time have originated in the Universal Soul
which has two forces: the active and intellective {quwwa ‘amaliyy’a and quwwa
‘ilmiyya). The active force is in charge of moving bodies and objects, 11 while the
intellective force is capable of perceiving knowledge, or updating the soul’s spir-
itual state. So physical time (i.e. that associated with physical objects) is that in
which bodies keep moving to preserve their existence, and spiritual time is that
in which human beings’ Heart perceive knowledge from their Lord [ Ayyam AI-
Sha 'n: 6]. Physical time, therefore, is originated from the active force of the Uni-
versal Soul, while spiritual time originates from its intellective force [ Ayyam
Al-Sha’n: 7],
On the other hand, since natural (or physical) time is a consequence of mate-
rial motion in Nature, it is originated with the isotropic orb which is the first orb
38 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
in Nature in which the first body was created (see section 1.4). When this iso-
tropic orb ( al-falak al-atlas), was created and started to move, its motion defined
natural time. But because this orb is isotropic - the same in all directions - it is
not possible to measure time in this orb alone, because there was nothing to
compare its motion to it. And when Allah created the second orb that includes
the farthest stars (galaxies) that are appropriately called fixed stars, the (appar-
ent) motion of those stars in this orb defined the day as the complete revolution
of this orb: ‘When Allah caused the higher orbs to move and He created days in
the first orb (the isotropic orb) and defined it (the day) in the second orb which is
the orb of the apparently fixed stars’ \Ayydm Al-Sha 6],
However, as Ibn ‘Arabi says, the motion of the isotropic orb was actually
determined from above; it started when the first degree of Gemini was matching
the divine ‘Foot’ on the ‘Pedestal’ ( kursi ) 12 above the isotropic orb, and after one
complete revolution, the first cosmic ‘Day’ of creation was done, and that was
Sunday. Then the process of divine creation continued through Monday,
Tuesday, and so on until its initial completion on Saturday - and then it started
over again [11.437.34]. Because this creative ‘Day’ was determined from above,
it was not possible to know its duration [11.437.27]. It is true that we divide this
day into 24 hours, but this is a mere convention. It is actually not possible to
determine the length of this day because there is nothing else (in Nature) to
compare its motion to, so we use this day to measure other relative ‘days’ of
other orbs that are below the orb of fixed stars, and also the ‘days’ of the spirit-
ual (and divine) orbs that are above this physical isotropic orb too. We shall
devote Chapter 3 to explaining in more detail the seven Days of the cosmic
‘Week’ and how they are caused.
2.5 Space-time and the speed of light
Although time does not appear to be like space, in the theory of Relativity it is
treated as a real dimension just like any one of the other three dimensions of
space (length, width, depth: x, y, z). In Relativity, as we explained in the preced-
ing chapter, any point in the universe can be expressed in terms of its four-
dimensional space-time co-ordinates (x, y, z, t); we do not have time alone or
space alone, but a single field called space-time. 13
Likewise, Ibn ‘Arabi describes the physical universe as something that ‘is con-
fined in time and space’ [1.121.22]. Furthermore, one of the most important
results of Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of time is that he considers that we are living in ‘Sat-
urday’, while the other six cosmic ‘Days’ from Sunday to Friday account for the
creation of the world - which is now continuously being re-created by Allah (see
also section 5.6) - in space. Allah creates the three-dimensional world (actually
six-dimensional/directional if we consider the two directions of each dimension)
in six ‘Days’ from Sunday to Friday, but we human beings witness only Saturday
because in the other six days of the week we (along with the rest of creation) are
still being created. Ibn ‘Arabi insists that this divine creative process is repeated
every single moment, as we shall explain in the following chapters.
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 39
However, the result of what we have just said is that time (‘Saturday’), though
it is special, is still just like any one of the other six Days that correspond to the
six (or three) spatial dimensions. So indeed the world, for Ibn ‘Arabi, is confined
in those seven ‘dimensions’ of space-time (6 plus 1) that are similar - since all
are ‘days’. This is the ultimate meaning of the many verses in the Qur’an speci-
fying that Allah created the heavens and the Earth ‘in six Days’ (corresponding
to space) and that ‘then He mounted [i.e. on Saturday, in time] on the Throne ’
(Qur’an 7:45, 10:3, 11:7, 25:59, 32:4, 50:38 and 57:4). This could also be easily
comprehended if we recall that the actual meaning of time is reduced to the
existence of the world in the present moment, not the past or the future. Thus
manifest existence is confined in space and time, so both space and time refer to
existence, and they have no meaning when taken by themselves, without the
things or events that happen in them. This new concept will add another aspect
to the theory of Relativity that considers time as one dimension of the four
dimensions of space-time, especially since Ibn ‘Arabi gives exciting details
about how those seven Days of the cosmic Week are interconnected, as we shall
see in the following two chapters.
However, there are still many obvious and hidden differences between space
and time. At the beginning of chapter 59 and in the long chapter 559 (which
summarizes the key contributions of each of the preceding chapters of the
Futuhat), Ibn ‘Arabi points out the similarities and differences between space
and time. ‘Time’, he says, ‘is just like space, an extension that has no (outer)
limit’ [1.291.6]. Then he adds:
Space is an attribute of something that exists, but time is an attribute of
something that is confined but does not necessarily exist. Space is defined
by who sits in it, and time is counted by breaths. The (ontological status
of) ‘contingent possibility’ ( imkan ) affects both time and space. Time has
an (ontological) foundation that it refers back to and is based upon, which
is the divine Name ‘the Age’ ( al-dahr ). Space emerged by the ‘establish-
ment’ ( istiwa ’) (of the All-Merciful on the Throne, 20:5), and time emerged
by the ‘descending down (of the Lord) to the (lowest) heaven’ (referring
to the hadith: ‘Our Lord, may He be Praised, descends every night, in the
last third of the night, to the lowest sky . . .’ [ Kanz : 3351, 3355, 3388], see
also section 2.14). But there was time in the Dust (‘ amci ’) even before the
‘establishment’. . . . Time is a circumstance for an event just like meanings
for letters, and space is not like a circumstance, so it is not like the letter.
Time is confined through division by ‘now’ and does not necessarily require
the existence of objects, but space can not be comprehended without objects
(that occupy it), so it is a kind of (ontological) ‘home’ (for what is created
in it).
[IV. 337. 5]
On the other hand, the concept of using time to measure distance was already
used by the ancient Arabs who used to measure distance by how it took them to
40 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
travel through it, usually by camel. But lbn ‘Arabi uses this concept in a more
abstract way that can be compared with the form of measurement that is now
widely used in astronomy: the light year. In many places he repeatedly says that
the distance between this particular celestial orb and that orb is a particular
number of ‘years’, without specifying what speed or form of motion might be
involved. For example, he says that the distance between the top and bottom of
Gehenna is ‘seventy-five hundred years’ [1.297.15]. And in other places he says
that Gehenna is (or ‘will be’ [1.297.17]) in the entire space situated from the
Earth to just below the orb of fixed stars (the constellations of the Moon man-
sions) [1.303.9, III. 440-441].
Now according to modern astronomy, the distance from the Earth and our
solar system to either extreme of the width of our Milky Way galaxy roughly
equals the distance travelled by light in 7,500 years. So in effect one could argue
that Ibn ‘Arabi actually used the unit of a kind of ‘light year’ to measure dis-
tance, more than seven centuries before modem astronomers, and that he gave a
very accurate value of the width of what is now known as the Milky Way
galaxy.
Regarding the speed of light, Ibn ‘Arabi declares that ‘nothing is faster than
sight ( basar ) among the (human) senses; the time of opening the sight is the time
of its seeing the fixed planets (stars) or what is above them or between them
despite the large distance that could not be reached for thousands of years by
foot’ [IV. 43 1.34; see also 1.702.20, 11.402.30],
Furthermore, in chapter 8 of the Fntuhat Ibn ‘Arabi mentions many extraordi-
nary and mysterious facts about another ‘earth of Reality’ ( ard al-haqiqa) -
another world existing in the barzakh or ‘divine Imagination’, and accessible to
spiritual travellers - which is
an earth so spacious that the Throne and what it includes, the Pedestal, the
heavens, the earths, what is beneath the soil, all the Gardens and Gehenna,
would all be just like a ring in (comparison to the vast extent of) the desert
of this ‘earth’.
[1.126.30],
He then talks about his and other Sufis’ (spiritual) visits to this Earth and that
the life there is so extraordinary that many of the logically impossible things for
us would normally exist there. One of the things that he mentioned about this
Earth is that ‘the speed of their (people’s) travel on ground or by sea is faster
than the perception of sight when it sees things’ [1.128.26].
It is perhaps relevant to mention here that one of the consequences of modern
theories of high-energy elementary particles is that each particle (such as elec-
trons, protons and neutrons) has an anti-particle which, upon meeting with its
counterpart, would annihilate and convert together into light or electromagnetic
waves (Trefil 1938: 53-67). Likewise matter (atoms) has anti-matter that may
exist somewhere under extreme circumstances, such as in the core of hot stars
and galaxies, though it has also been made in laboratories (Schewe and Stein
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 41
1999). Some scientists say that, like matter and anti-matter, there should be an
anti-universe. In this anti-universe all the laws of physics would behave
strangely. For example the speed of light in our universe is a maximum terminal
as we have seen above (the theory of Relativity), but in the anti-universe it
would be a minimum terminal. Such a case, therefore, is predictable in Ibn
‘Arabi’s cosmology, as he mentions in regard to this mysterious ‘earth of
Reality’.
2.6 Motion
Time, therefore, is necessary to describe motion. But the answer to the question
‘what is motion?’ may not be as obvious as it might at first appear. Matter is in
continuous motion, and objects require a cause to move; this is undisputable
philosophical fact. But the basic issue in the philosophy of motion is whether the
matter-in-motion can be itself the cause of its motion. The dialectical explana-
tion considers that matter is the most primary source of the development of com-
pletion, and therefore it can be itself the cause and subject of motion.
Metaphysical philosophy, on the other hand, insists on differentiating between
that which moves and the mover. This is because motion is a gradual develop-
ment and completion of a deficient thing, which can not by itself develop and
complete gradually - and therefore can not be the cause of completion.
Osman Yahya listed a book with the name ‘ kitab al-haraka ’ (‘the book of
motion’) (OY: no. 223), but as in the case of ‘ kitab al-zaman ’ this book is not
found. However, Ibn ‘Arabi talks about motion in some detail in the long chapter
198. There [11.456-458] he affirms that: ‘everything in the world that moves and
rests does not move and rest by itself, but by a mover and a rester’, but he adds
that: ‘this mover either moves the object by itself or by its will to move it; so
those who believe the mover moves the object by itself say that motion is
“created” in the object, so motion by itself - when it is in the object - causes it
to move’. And the same can be said regarding rest. ‘But if the mover moves the
object by its will, it will do that either by an (intermediate) means or without a
means.’ Then he adds that, if the mover is the object itself, then it has to have a
will Tike the motion of the human being who moves under his will in the (six
physical) directions’.
Ibn ‘Arabi then differentiates between the regular circular motion of the orb
( al-falak , the celestial sphere of each planetary heaven) and the motion of
objects, where ‘the motions of the orb are tidy and in a sequential manner like
the motion of the millstone; so each part does not depart from its neighbouring
(part), while the motion of (the four sub-lunar) elements is different’. Then he
explains that ‘the motion of the elements is entwined, where the part departs
from the neighbouring part and occupies new places different from the ones it
was in’. He also adds that
the motion of the orb - for us (the Sufis) - is like the motion of the human
being in the directions . . . the orb moves by (its) ‘will’ in order to give
42 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
out what is (inspired) in its heaven by the divine Command which causes
the things (to occur) in the (earthly) elements ( ‘anasir) and the generators
(of earthly changes, the muwalliddt ); so as a result of this (orbs’) motion,
time emerges. So time has no effect in its (the orbs’) appearance, but rather
it affects (only) what is below it. Time does not affect the appearance of
the orb, because it is itself the appearance (the result in the lower elemen-
tal realms) - whereas the things that happen and appear in the orbs, the
heavens, and the higher world have causes other than time.
[11.456-458]
We have to admit that physicists habitually accept a very naive concept of
motion, usually expressed by the formula ‘velocity is distance per time’ (v = sit),
which is usually used for a simple uniform motion on a straight line though other
complicated motions have more complicated equations that are all based on this
simple concept of distance per time. Such a simplified concept of motion has
been working nicely for many centuries and, although modem theories slightly
corrected these classical (Newtonian) equations, they did not address the more
philosophical question about the nature of motion itself. To answer this question,
one has to verify whether space and time are discrete or continuous, an issue that
(as we saw in Chapter 1) still persists and is unsettled even in the latest theories.
However, we find some philosophers, like Zeno, who argued that - whether we
consider this way or the other - we shall inevitably end up with some irresolva-
ble paradoxes (see section 7.4).
Ibn ‘Arabi, on the basis of his theory of the oneness of being and the principle
of continual re-creation (see section 5.6), gives a clear and far more extensive
definition of ‘motion’ ( Haraka : Ibn ‘Arabi’s wider definition here reflects the
fact that this Arabic philosophical term refers not just to physical motion but far
more extensively to all kinds of ‘change’ in general) which is utterly different
from the simple notion of just a distance in time. In the same chapter (198) that
we just quoted above, he says:
Then you have to know that the truth about motion and rest is that they
are two states of the natural embodied ( mutahayyiz ) things . . . And that is
because the embodied thing will necessarily need a volume ( hayyiz ) to
occupy by itself in the time of its existence. So it may either be in the same
place ( hayyiz ) in the next time, or times, which is called ‘rest’, or it is in the
next place in the next time and in the following place in the third time. So its
appearing in and occupying these places one after another can happen only
by ‘changing’ from one place to another, and this may only be due to a cause.
So it would be fine to call this change ‘motion’, although we know there is
nothing but the embodied thing itself, the place, and the fact that it occupied
a place next to that which it occupied before. But those who claim that there
is some (real) thing called ‘motion’, which got into the embodied thing and
caused it to change from one place to another, they have to prove it!
[11.457.27]
Ibn ‘ Arabi ’s concept of time 43
With the above definition of motion, Ibn ‘Arabi has in mind his basic principle
of the ‘ever-renewed creation’, which suggests that the entire world is continu-
ously being re-created every single moment of time, which we shall discuss in
detail in Chapter 5. Therefore there is no real motion like that which we habitu-
ally perceive in the human ‘common sense’ or ‘estimative’ faculty (wahm); in
reality there is only a ‘change of place’: i.e. the thing that is the subject of motion
is being re-created in different places (not moved between them), so we imagine
motion. At the end of his short book Al-Durrat Al-Bayda ’ (The White Pearl) (Al-
Durrat Al-Bayda’: 142), Ibn ‘Arabi wonders how (the general) people (not to
mention physicists and philosophers) do not so easily realize the delusion of
motion and space. He says that ‘everything that moves does not move in occu-
pied space (mala’), but it moves in a void (khala)' . Then he explains that the
thing may not move into a new place until this new place is emptied. So by
simple logic, this (false) assumption would lead to the conclusion that the result
of an action would occur before the action itself. For example when you fill a
cup with water, the air already in the cup will have to be gradually evacuated as
water pours in. At any instance (the smallest duration of time), before the water
(the cause) can replace the air, the air has to be displaced (the result). So the
result happens before the cause. One may argue that in this case both the cause
and the result could happen at the same time. This, however, is also prohibited
according to Ibn ‘Arabi who asserts that the entities of the world can be created
only in series one after the other (see sections 5.6 and 7.3). Thus this radically
different conception meticulously challenges Newton’s law of action/reaction -
which practically speaking always holds true, but which seems to be philosophi-
cally deceiving. So the mere concept of motion apparently violates causality, the
most fundamental principle of physics, and common sense. Actually, Ibn ‘Arabi
(following earlier radical theories in kalam theology) even questions causality
itself - as we shall see again in Chapter 7 - where he affirms that Allah says: ‘I
create the things next to the causes and not by them’ [11.204.13]. Though this
does not deny causality itself (i.e. the appearances of regular ‘natural’ causes), it
does suggest a radically new type of strictly divine causality.
Ibn ‘Arabi concludes, therefore, that motion is only a new creation in differ-
ent neighbouring places; there is no actual ‘path’ of the object between its start
and the destination points when taken on the smallest scale of time (i.e. when
time itself is quantized). On the basis of this novel definition of motion, we shall
be able to resolve Zeno’s famous paradoxes that are discussed in Chapter 7. But
this is also what happens, according to modem physics, in the atom where the
electrons ‘jump’ between the energy levels (which have different distance from
the nucleus) without any possible existence in between. The reason for this is
that the energy of the atom is quantized, and when this energy changes, either by
absorbing or emitting photons, the distance of some of its electrons from the
nucleus will change correspondingly. So because the energy is quantized, this
distance has to be quantized too; the electron therefore may not stay in between
the orbits at all, or even smoothly jump between them; it may exist only in this
orb or in the other orbit that is at a discrete distance from the first (Wehr et al.
44 Ibn ‘Arabi s concept of time
1984: 72). In the Qur’an, it is also said that this is what happened to the throne
of the Queen of Sheba when it refers to the unnamed man ‘ who has knowledge
from the (divine) Book ’ moving her throne from Sheba to Solomon’s court ‘in a
blink of the eye ’ (see section 7.2).
2.7 Relative and curved time
In the literature of Sufism and Islamic spirituality, we read a lot of fantastic
stories that apparently look ‘imaginary’ even to physicists who are familiar with
the theory of Relativity and the concepts such as time travel that we have seen in
section 1.9. Ibn ‘Arabi refers to the relativity of time in many direct and indirect
ways. He explicitly says: ‘minutes are years while sleeping’ [IV. 337.1]. But
‘sleeping’ here does not necessarily mean usual sleep, it could be any state of
imagination or realization that momentarily isolates Sufis from witnessing the
visible world while their spirit are occupied with other dimensions of being. For
example, he speaks in chapter 73 of the Futuhat about the 300 spiritual l< powers
(s. ‘arif) ‘whose hearts are like the heart of Adam’. There he says that:
If a knower (of those three hundred) is taken (to witness) one scene of the
Lord’s scenes ( al-mashahid al-mbiibiyya ), they receive in one of its ‘days’
(i.e. ‘the Lord’s Day’, which equals a thousand earthly years, 22:47) at
that moment (when they are taken to the Lord’s scene) divine knowledge
(equivalent to) what others get in the world of (normal) senses in one thou-
sand nonnal years with hard work and preparation. So this is how the divine
knowledge that anyone from among those three hundred achieves when
they are taken out of their own (carnal) soul and is confined in one Lord’s
Day. The person who can appreciate what we have said is only whoever
has tasted that, when (normal) time was folded up (tayy) for them in that
moment, just as distance and other quantities are folded up for the eyesight
whenever someone opens their eye and looks at the orb of fixed stars: at
the same time when he opens their eye, the rays (of his eyesight) are con-
nected with the bodies of these stars. So look how big is this distance and
this velocity (of our normal eyesight, in that case)!
[II. 9. 23]
On the other hand, one of the main consequences of the modern general theory
of Relativity is the curvature of space and time, and this conception is explicitly
referred to by Ibn ‘Arabi when he says in poetry: ‘the age has curved on us and
bent ( hadaba al-dahr ‘alayna wa inhanaf [1.202.7]. It is important to notice
here that he used the word ‘the age’ (or eternal, ‘divine time’), instead of time,
because in modem cosmology the curvature of time is apparent only at very
large scales, and we shall see below (section 2.19) that for Ibn ‘Arabi ‘the age’
includes not only time but also space.
Also regarding time travel, which is widely known in science fiction and
theoretically allowable in the theory of Relativity (see section 1.9), many Sufis
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 45
and similar figures across many other religious traditions have of course fre-
quently referred to their experiences of various forms of ‘travel’ across normal
boundaries of time. Ibn ‘Arabi, for example, mentions the story of al-Jawhari
who went to take a bath in the Nile and when he was in the water he saw, like a
vision, that he was in Baghdad and he got married and lived with his wife for six
years and had children. ‘And then he was returned to himself (from this momen-
tary vision). . . . And after few months this woman, whom he saw in the vision
that he had married, came looking for his house (in Egypt), and when he met her
he knew her and knew the children’ [11.82.22].
So according to this story, al-Jawhari travelled to another far-away place and
lived there six years, all in a moment of his actual time at his first location in
Egypt. Ibn ‘Arabi’s original readers would of course immediately connect this
experience of the ‘folding of time’ (as the Sufis called it) with the narratives of
the Mi‘raj or ascension of the Prophet through and beyond all the heavens in a
single night-journey (; isra ').
In addition to this famous Mi‘raj in which the Prophet Muhammad travelled
vast distances in a very short time, 14 Ibn ‘Arabi himself spoke in detail in chapter
367 of the Fntuhat about his own numerous ascensions, although he affirms that
his experiences were only spiritual, while the Prophet’s ascension was both
physical and spiritual [III. 342. 32]. 15
According to his accounts of this type of spiritual ascent in chapter 367, the
physical elements of the Sufi’s body dissociate and return to their corresponding
natural place - earth to earth, water to water, air to air and fire to fire - and after
that their spiritual self enters the celestial spheres to meet the spirits of the proph-
ets inhabiting each sphere and to learn from them. Then one may even ascend
further to the highest spiritual dimensions, as Ibn ‘Arabi also describes in greater
detail in his highly autobiographical Kitab Al-Isra ' ila Al-Maqam Al-Asra.' 6
Just as is specified in the theory of Relativity, a person who undergoes time
travel will encounter many more events than those who stay in their place. The
big difference, however, is that Relativity anticipates that time travellers will
encounter much longer (real) times, and that they will realize after they come
back to their starting point that many generations have passed away. This has led
to many strange paradoxes like the ‘twin paradox’ (D’lnvemo 1992: 38). For Ibn
‘Arabi, however, the issue is far more simple and realistic: the only difference
between the spiritual ‘time traveller’ and others is that travellers will acquire
much more knowledge or spiritual realization, because they encounter more
events in a (outwardly) short period of time. For Ibn ‘Arabi, time, after all, is
imaginary, so more time means more events and more events means more
knowledge. The Prophet Muhammad (and others like Ibn ‘Arabi in their purely
spiritual ‘ascensions’) encountered in the night of the ascension a multitude of
events that normally need many years. 17 Likewise, in the illustrative cases of al-
Jawhari and the three hundred spiritual knowers mentioned above, other people
around them did not feel any noticeable change. This subject is very close to the
case of sleep and dreams except that the Sufi in the ascension is the one who is
awake because Ibn ‘Arabi affirmed that the Prophet Muhammad said: ‘people
46 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
are asleep, and when they die they wake up’ (this hadith is not found in standard
hadith collections, but is widely quoted by Sufis and especially Ibn ‘Arabi
[1.313.11, 11.379.33, IV. 404. 16]), which means that our perception of this world
is like a dream and those who are ‘awake’ (the spiritually realized people) will
experience time in a different way. So a person in deep sleep will not feel the
time as those who are awake next to him or her experience it. Similarly, the
student who pays attention to the teacher will acquire more knowledge than
those who are absentminded. 18
In the same way, the ‘Unique (spiritual) Pole’ ( al-qntb al-fard) is called sahib
al-waqt (‘the master of time’, see chapter 336 of the Futuhat [III. 135], and also
Al-Mu'jam Al-Siifi: 678-683), because he is always in full attention to what
Allah wants of him every single moment. The true master of time witnesses eve-
rything in the world (since all that is a kind of reflection of his own spirit, or
even part of it) all the time: that is to say, he witnesses the created world
throughout space and time. This high state of attention, however, is only attain-
able by Al-Qutb (‘the Pole’ or ‘Axis’ of the spiritual universe) who is at the top
of the hierarchy of the saints [II. 6. 28]. This Qutb, like Ibn ‘Arabi himself, is a
man whose heart is like the heart of the Prophet Muhammad [1.151.6], ‘and the
one who is on the heart of Muhammad, peace and prayers be upon him, has the
corner of the Black Stone (in the Kaaba), and that is for us thanks to Allah’
[1.160.24, see also section 6.2].
The spiritual ‘Pole’ therefore is witnessing ‘out of time’ - which again means
that he is witnessing everything in the world, spatially and temporally. Other
Friends of God (the awliya ’) may attain this high state of awareness to a relative
extent, ‘though this is very rare amongst the (special) people of Allah, and it is
(only) for a few of them, the people of attention, those who never overlook
Allah’s rule in things’ [11.539.27]. This also explains how some divinely illumi-
nated people, like the prophets, encountered with Allah things that would not
normally occur to normal people. For example, Allah’s direct speech to Moses
can be explained only, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, when we consider that Moses
was out of time when Allah spoke to him - since otherwise Allah would be con-
fined to time, and this is not possible. Ibn ‘Arabi explained this in some details
in his short Book of Eternity, that is one of 29 short treatises published together
in the famous book known as Rasa ’il Ibn ‘Arabi.
We actually always live in a relative time, but, although we encounter a rela-
tive number of events, time itself has no reality. Because we measure time by
other standard events, like the clock’s ticks or the Sun’s motion, we do not feel
the relativity of time. But if we measure it by our own internal activities (or what
is known as psychological time), we shall always be travelling through time.
However, real travelling to the past is not possible at all, since time itself does
not go back: once a form is created and goes into the past it never comes back
again, although it is possible to remember past events: ‘The past that has gone
never comes back, but the similar (form) may come back; so when it comes back
it causes (someone) through itself to remember that which was like it and has
gone and is past’ [11.186.27].
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 47
However, Ibn ‘Arab! is well aware that it is quite possible to interact with the
spirits of the dead (who are ‘dead’ only to this world, not in their vast spiritual
realm of the barzakh) because they may become visibly embodied in a spiritual
form in this world [1.755.10], as frequently happens in various spiritual experi-
ences. For example, Ibn ‘Arabi mentions his personal encounter with Ahmad al-
Sabti, the son of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, whom he met while
circumambulating the Kaaba. When Ibn ‘Arabi first saw him he doubted his
case, because he saw him not pushing nor being pushed, and going through
between the two men without separating any space between them. So he realized
he must be a visibly embodied spirit, and he went to him and spoke with him
and asked him why he was called al-Sabti (see his answer in section 3.6)
[1.638.32],
Travelling to the future and meeting people who are not bom yet is also pos-
sible, though it may also be a kind of simulation or personification of their
spirits, and Ibn ‘Arabi also mentioned similar things:
And I have seen all the messengers and the prophets, witnessing them all by
direct vision. And I talked to Hud, brother of ‘Ad, in particular from their
group (Hirtenstein 1999: 84-86). And I have seen all the people of faith,
also by direct eye-witnessing, all those who have been among them and
those who will come to be, until the Day of the Rising: the Real showed
them to me on a single plane on two different occasions. And I accompa-
nied (for spiritual learning) a group from among the Messengers, in addition
to Muhammad - may God bless him. (For example), I recited the Qur’an
to Abraham al-Khalil; and I returned (to God) by the hands of Jesus; and
Moses bestowed on me the (inspired) knowing of (spiritual) unveiling and
clarification, and the knowing of (the spiritual meaning of) the alternation of
‘ the daytime and the night ’ (2:164, 3:190, etc.). So when I had assimilated
that knowing, the night-time disappeared and the daytime ( nahar ) remained
all the day long, so the Sun never (again) set for me nor did it rise - and this
unveiling was a notification from Allah that I would have no part of suffer-
ing in the hereafter.
[IV. 77.27]
2.8 The discrete nature of time
The most important and distinctive of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas about time is that he
considers it to be quantized. Thus Ibn ‘Arabi declared in the Futuhat and other
books that ‘the smallest time is the single time that does not accept division’
[11.384.31].
There has been a great deal of debate in the history of philosophy and science
as to whether time (and space) is discrete or continuous, though most philoso-
phers and scientists deal with time as an infinitely divisible quantity. However,
the AslTarite theologians’ distinctive physical theory (of the jawhar, or ‘indivis-
ible atom’) is entirely built on the discreteness of space and time, and Ibn ‘Arabi
48 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
himself acknowledges his debt to them for this understanding. For example, al-
Baqillani, one of the famous Ash’arite theologians, suggested an atomic nature
of time, according to which in each ‘atom’ of time the entire world annihilates
and is re-created in a slightly different form (MacDonald 1927: 326-344). This
perspective is at least verbally and conceptually very much in accord with Ibn
‘Arabi’s fundamental principle of the ongoing re-creation of all things (see
section 5.6) - although the Ash’arite theologians did not make any reference to
the key experiential basis of this spiritual insight which is so central to Ibn
‘Arabi’s discussion of the ‘ever-renewed creation’. What is also new and distinc-
tive here about Ibn ‘Arabi’s understanding of this conception of time is that he
argues that the actual ‘quantum’ of time equals our normal earthly day itself
[Ayyam Al-Sha’n : 6]. It is not easy to bridge the gap between this metaphysical
hypothesis and our everyday familiar experience of indefinitely divisible time: of
the year into months, the month into weeks, the week into days, the day into
hours, hour into minutes, minutes into seconds, and so on apparently infinitely.
Ibn ‘Arabi, however, explains plainly why time has to be discrete according to
his understanding (or ‘according to his Day’), and we shall devote Chapter 4 to
discussing this difficult issue in more detail. Here we can give only a general
preview.
For Ibn ‘Arabi, time itself does not have a separate existence, but is reduced
to motion or, more precisely, to the ongoing creative acts of God, or cosmic
‘events’ (each discrete divine ‘Task’ or sha’n) of each ‘Day’. And according
to the Qur’anic description of God, each Day He is upon some (one single)
task (sha’n) (55:29). And since, as Ibn ‘Arabi explains [Ayyam Al-Sha’n\ 10],
Allah specified in this verse that He is every Day in ‘owe’ task, and not many as
we perceive in our illusion, which witnesses a multitude of events every day
because of the intertwining between these Divine Days and our normal days.
This means that this ‘Day’ has to be indivisible, because only one divine action
or event should be happening in it [Ayyam Al-Sha’n\ 6]. As we have seen, Ibn
‘Arabi uses the same Qur’anic term and therefore calls this fundamental quantum
of time ‘the Day of Task’ or divine event (yawm al-sha’n), or - using an
expression taken from the physical theory of Ash’arite theology - ‘the singular
(unique) time’ ( al-zaman al-fard) [1.292.16, II. 82. 6]. Therefore the single
‘Day of task’ in reality equals our normal day; or more precisely, a full
revolution of the celestial sphere as viewed from the Earth. Ibn ‘Arabi helps to
clarify this counter-intuitive understanding of the foundational divine ‘Event’ by
introducing some related new concepts that are also based on certain Qur’anic
verses.
The first related concept is that the world is surely re-created every singular
day over and over again [11.208.26, II. 385. 4]. So we (our souls), as part of this
world, live or ordinarily experience only our very limited portion from this sin-
gular day; a single instantaneous ‘moment’ of time that equals the global ‘24
hours’ taking place within the entire world at that particular instant, but as
divided up (in actual perception) by the total number of perceiving entities and
their perceptions in the world. During this divine creative ‘glance’ ( lamha ), we
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 49
perceive a still picture of our limited perception of the world, after which we
intrinsically cease to exist. Then in the second ‘Day’ (actually in the second
‘Week’!), we live another moment to perceive a different still picture, owing to
the ever-new creation created by Allah in this singular day. Thus, through a suc-
cession of these instantaneously re-created new ‘pictures’ of the whole, we
observe what appears to be motion, just as with the illusion of cinematic projec-
tion. We said ‘in the second Week’ because Ibn ‘Arabi showed that we are
indeed only living in ‘Saturday’, since the other ‘Days’ (of Creation) of the
Divine Week, from Sunday to Friday of the Days of tasks, are for space not for
time, because at every moment in our life the world is re-created in six Days (for
space), and it is then displayed on Saturday, but we do not witness the process of
creating the world: we only witness it as created. So our life as a time is a collec-
tion of Saturdays, and each moment that we live is indeed a Week; six Days for
creating the world in space, and Saturday for displaying it in time. We shall
come to this important and novel concept in section 3.5.
The other related concept is that the moments that we feel flowing as day-
times and night-times are actually a collection (of discrete time-space quanta),
and not a straightforward combination of the actual flow of the single divine
‘Days’. The normal days that we encounter are ‘intertwined’ ( mutawalija , v.
yuliju) - another key Qur’anic expression - with the actually existing cosmic
‘Days of tasks’ in a special way that we shall explore in Chapter 4. As a result of
this intertwining, we see the appearance of a multitude number of events in our
nonnal days.
In addition to that, Ibn ‘Arabi also reminds us that at every moment there is a
full day around the globe: evening somewhere, morning somewhere else, and
noon in other places [Ayydm Al-Sha’n: 6]. Therefore, at every moment for us,
which is a full day when viewed globally, Allah creates a single event in the
world; and then He re-creates the world in ever-new events at each succeeding
moment. The day that we perceive and experience is therefore a collection of
successive ‘snapshots’ of the actual ‘Days of events’ which are the actual exist-
ing basis for our experience of the flow of time.
As we said above, the idea of discrete time (and space) is not new in the
history of philosophy and physics, though it had been completely discarded after
the advent of classical Newtonian mechanics. However, many philosophers
(such as Kant, Russell and Leibniz) have opposed Newton’s hypothesis that
space and time have a separate linear and continuous entity, as we showed in
section 1.8. With the advent of Quantum Mechanics, Field Theory, the Theory
of Quantum Gravity and the Superstrings Theory, the idea of a quantized time
(and space) was revived again, and much work has recently been done in this
respect as we mentioned in section 1.9.
The human mind naturally thinks of quantities as either discrete or continu-
ous; there is no other way. A closer examination of Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of time,
however, shows that it is indeed neither discrete nor continuous. We must
remember that he considers time as imaginary after all, as well as most other
quantities such as space and even mass (see section 7.9). As we indicated previ-
50 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
ously, such seemingly strange conclusions result directly from Ibn ‘Arabi’s fun-
damental theory of the oneness of being: i.e. that the apparent ‘parts’ of existence
are merely manifestations of a single real existence that is One and Unique,
neither multiple nor divisible. The notion of either discreteness or continuousness
is indispensable when we imagine multitudes, but with absolute Unity there
would be no meaning to such conceptions. Therefore, Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of
time is that it would be discrete if we approach it on the (ultimately imaginary)
plane of apparent multiplicity, but in reality there is no such reality as ‘time’ at
all. The same perspective can be applied to space.
2.9 The ‘chest’ of time
Ibn ‘Arabi asserts that
You should know that everything has a ‘chest’ ( sadr ), and knowing it in
this path (of mysticism) is one of the noble sciences and knowledge. This
is because the world and every kind (in it) is created according to the image
of the Human Being ( insan ), who is the last existent, and the Human Being
alone is created according to the divine Image, both its inner and outer
dimensions, and Allah created them with a chest. So between the Real, to
Whom is the firstness, and the Human Being, to whom is the lastness, there
are ‘chests’ whose number no one knows other than Allah.
[11.652.23]
The ‘chest’ of a thing is its front, the first thing to appear, which is why it is so
important to know it. Ibn ‘Arabi here applies and generalizes the verse in the
Qur’an that says: ‘ And whomsoever Allah wants to guide, He expands his chest
for “surrender” (islam), and whomsoever He wants to leave astray, He makes
his chest narrow and constricted as if he were engaged climbing up into the sky ’
(6:125).
But Ibn ‘Arabi adds that ‘the chest is in the second state of each form’
[11.652.27], since the first state is the essence (the ‘heart’) of the form itself and
the chest is its first appearance or effect. Then he lists many things and their cor-
responding ‘chests’, and he says that ‘the chest of time is the time (instant) of the
Dust’s acceptance of the form’ and ‘the chest of days is Monday’ [11.652.27].
Thus Ibn ‘Arabi adds that:
For every ‘chest’ there is a ‘heart’ ( qalb ), so as far as the heart remains
in the chest, the person will be blind because the chest is a veil over him.
So when Allah wants to make him or her truly seeing, he goes out of his
chest and sees. So the causes are the ‘chests’ of the existing things, and the
existing things are like the hearts; as far as the existing (thing or person) is
looking at the cause that it originated from, they will be blinded from wit-
nessing Allah Who (actually, ultimately) created them. Thus when Allah
wants to make (the person) truly seeing, they stop (or He causes them to
Ibn ‘ Arabi ’s concept of time 51
stop) looking at the cause that Allah created them ‘with’ ( ‘ indahu : i.e. as
opposed to ‘through’, bihi) and looks (instead) at the ‘special Face’ that is
(uniquely) between their Lord and them.
[11.652.35]
We are, therefore, normally ‘imprisoned’ in the chest of time, just as the heart of
the person lacking faith is imprisoned in or ‘veiled by’ his or her chest. To over-
come time (and space), we therefore have to break out and perceive the reality of
existence through the ‘heart’, and in particular the special inner relation or aspect
between the ‘heart’ and the Real.
2.10 Circular time and cyclical time
Ibn ‘Arabi repeatedly describes time as a ‘circle’ (, dci’ira ), [1.387.33], which does
not have a beginning or an end, but when we specify a point on this circle (the
present; the point in time in which we exist now) and look in one direction,
whether to the past or future, we do set a relative beginning and an end. So the
present (now) joins together the two ends of time in a circle [1.387.32,
III. 546. 30].
It is very difficult to imagine this, as it was very difficult to convince people
that the Earth is spherical when this idea was first introduced, precisely because
most everyday activities show us only a small portion of the Earth’s surface
which appears flat to us. Yet time is not like space. In the case of the Earth it was
relatively easy to prove that it is round because we can view its curvature - from
space, or from a great height - all at once. But the problem with time is that we
can normally witness only the present moment of it, not the future nor the past;
we can only imagine them. Therefore, in order to understand the meaning of
‘circular’ time, we have to imagine that the whole of all existence (what we per-
ceive as future, present and past) exists all at once. This whole existence is then
like a circle: i.e. a curve that does not have a visible beginning or an end when
we look at it from outside. When we sit on the circumference of this circle and
look in one direction, we set a beginning and an end. In the same way: the
present moment in which we exist is a point on the circle of the whole existence,
this point defines the future and the past and it also defines an imaginary begin-
ning and an imaginary end of time: imaginary because the whole circle of exist-
ence (of ‘the Age’, al-dahr) is infinite. The imaginary beginning is the eternity a
parte ante (al-azal) and the imaginary end is the eternity a parte post (al-abad)
[IV. 266. 3].
Circular time has yet another important meaning which is not possible to
explain fully at this point, because it needs additional premises that we shall
discuss in the following chapters, so we can refer to it only briefly here. As
described above, Ibn ‘Arabi views the world as being continuously re-created,
and time is reduced to the present moment because the past and the future are
only imaginary. Therefore time, or the present moment, goes in ever repeated
circular motion with the re-creation of the world. In other words, the presence,
52 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
which is time, goes round the world continuously and repeatedly to create it and
re-create it again; so it is circular (and cyclic) in this distinctly metaphysical
respect.
Moreover, this cosmic notion of ‘circular time’ is quite different from ‘cyclical
time’, and the two ideas should not be confused in Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings. ‘Cycli-
cal’ or periodic ( dawri) time, such as the day, the week, the month and the year,
is a duration of time in which the same kind of events should be happening in the
different repeating cycles of time. For example, the Sun sets every evening to
start a new day (because the ‘day’ for the Arabs was considered to start from
sunset, not from sunrise), and the Moon is bom approximately every four weeks
to start a new lunar month. We should again note, however, that in reality, accord-
ing to Ibn ‘Arabi, there is never any repetition at all [11.432.12, III.282.21]. Those
cycles of time are ‘similar’ to each other but never identical, as the terms ‘period’
or ‘cycle’ mean in modern physics. For Ibn ‘Arabi, the cycles of time are similar
because they are ruled by the same divine Names, which is why we expect to see
similar events. But the reason why we do not see identical events or true repeti-
tion is because of the interaction between different cycles of different divine
Names [III.201.14]. For example he says that ‘the motion of Sunday appeared
from the (divine) attribute “the All-Hearing” ( al-sam ') . . ., and the motion of
Monday appeared from the (divine) attribute “the Living” ( al-hayat)’ [II. 438. 9].
Therefore the cycle of Sunday is different from the cycle of Monday,
although they are both days in which the Sun rises and sets in the same way. On
the other hand, and on the basis of the same statement above, Sunday from this
week should be identical with Sunday from the previous week, because they
both appeared from the same divine Attribute. But they are not, because they do
not have the same position in the month or the year, or in other cycles that are
ruled by other divine Names and Attributes, so there is never any repetition. Ibn
‘Arabi nicely refers to this fact in his prayers Al-Salawat Al-Faydiyya, a short
text found at the end of Tawajjuhat Al-Huruf ( Cairo: Maktabat al-Qahira, n.d.),
when he says: ‘(He, i.e. the Prophet Muhammad, is) the Dust ( hayula ) of forms
which does not manifest in one form to any two (persons), nor in any one form
to anyone twice’ [also in 1.679.7, 11.77.27, II. 616. 3].
We shall devote Chapter 3 to the significance of the ‘Week’ in Ibn ‘Arabi’s
view, where we shall see that the week is the primary cycle of time, not the day.
We shall also see that Ibn ‘Arabi’s fundamental notion of ‘no repetition’ forms
the basis of a unique view of time and the cosmos, which will be discussed in
the following chapters. However, if we accept the approximation that different
cycles of time are defined by similar events, we then find that Ibn ‘Arabi defines
many important cycles other than the usual day, week, month, the seasons and
the year. In general, every divine Name of Allah has Its own ‘day’ (cycle), which
is a cycle of time that has a corresponding daytime and a night in the world
below it (see Table 2.1 below).
A correlation can also be made here between Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of cyclic time
and astrology. Knowing these cycles and their lengths and the specific Names
that rule them may give us some insight into what kind of events may happen in
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 53
Table 2. 1 Days of some orbs and divine names
The day of .. .
Its length in terms of normal Earth days
The Moon
28 days
The Sun
360 days = 1 year
Mercury
~30 years
al-rabb (the Lord)
1 ,000 years
al-mithl (the Like)
7,000 years
al-ma'drij (the ascending ways)
50,000 years
Zodiac
12,000 years
Longest planet (star) day
36,000 years
Note
The numbers have been collected from different books of Ibn ‘Arabi. We should add that - as noted
in our table here - Ibn 'Arabi actually considers the year to be 360 days rather than 365.25 days; see
also section 3 .2 for more details
the future, but it is not easy to tell exactly what is going to happen. The issue is
more like weather forecasting; by studying all the parameters we can tell with a
good probability how the weather may be in the near future.
2.11 The two cycles of life
According to the well-known hadith ‘Time has returned the same as it was when
Allah created the heavens and the Earth’ [Kanz: 12357], Ibn ‘Arabi argues that
the cosmos has completed one cycle from the beginning of creation until the
point where the spirit of the Prophet Muhammad is attached to his body, and he
notes that this cycle is 78,000 years. As he explains:
Time started in Libra for spiritual justice by the name the Hidden ( al-batin )
of Muhammad - may God bless him - as he said: ‘I was prophet when
Adam was still between water and clay’ [Kanz: 2017]. Then it (time) circled
around after one (Hill) time cycle, which is 78,000 years, to start another
cycle of time by the name ‘the Manifest’ ( al-zahir ) when the body of
Muhammad - may God bless him - appeared.
[1.146.18]
In the beginning of the Futuhat [1.121-124], Ibn ‘Arabi also states clearly the
order of creation in time during this cosmic time cycle, for major events of the
kinds created by Allah. The numbers that he gives clearly do not agree with
modern cosmology and geology, and can not be explained or understood in those
terms (as we showed in section 2.3 above).
2.12 ‘Days’
So we have seen in this chapter that time is in fact imaginary and exists only as
the Creator’s ‘Days’ and indeed indivisible moments, while all other divisions of
54 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
Figure 2.1 The Cycle of Life.
Note
The number of years are extracted from chapter 7 of the Futuhat [1.121-126],
time are conventional. For this reason we find that in the Qur’an the word ‘time’
is never used, while a great deal of attention is given there to mentioning differ-
ent sorts of ‘daytimes’ and ‘nights’ and the relations between them. Likewise,
we find that Ibn ‘Arabi pays considerable attention to describing the actual
meaning of the days and the relation between their different types.
As usual, the terms ‘daytime’ ( nahar ) and ‘night’ (lay I) are used by Ibn
‘Arabi to measure time, where the daytime extends from sunrise to sunset, while
the night ( layl) is from sunset to sunrise: both of those together - always begin-
ning with the night-time - are called a ‘day’ (yawm ), which is conventionally
divided into 24 hours. We must notice, however, that the above conventional
definitions are only approximate for our practical use here on Earth, since con-
siderable differences appear as soon as we begin to measure the length of the
day, for example, with relation to the Sun or to distant stars.
In the following passage Ibn ‘Arabi gives a precise definition of various units
of time such as the day, the daytime, the night, the month and the year. Some of
these definitions are, however, simply for practical use for the purpose of deter-
mining prayer times. More accurate variations will be discussed below and in
section 3.2. At the very beginning of the extremely long chapter 69, in which Ibn
‘Arabi talks about ‘the secret meanings of prayer ( salat)\ he devoted a full
section to detailed explanations about timing. For the purpose of demonstration
and simplification, Ibn ‘Arabi employs a hypothetical observer who is consid-
ered as a frame of reference. He says there:
‘Timing’ ( al-waqt ) is an expression for (our approximate) estimation con-
cerning a thing that does not accept the actual reality (‘ ayn ) of what is
estimated. So it is an (approximate) supposition, just like we suppose and
estimate a beginning, middle and an end in a spherical shape which in itself
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 55
and in its actual reality does not accept a beginning, middle or end. So we
construe all of this in it (only) by what we construe through the effect of our
supposition and estimation concerning it.
Likewise, timing ( waqt ) is an estimated supposition with regard to time
( al-zaman ), since time is circular, as Allah created it in its beginning, so it is
like a circle. The Prophet Muhammad, may Allah have peace and mercy
upon him, said: ‘ time has circulated [i.e. has come back to the same point]
like its form was on the day when Allah created if [ Kanz : 12357]. So he
mentioned that Allah created it circular (see section 2.10), and timings are
(only) estimated with regard to it.
So when Allah created the Isotropic Orb and it moved, the ‘day’ was not
specifically determined and no (temporally defining) reality had (yet) appeared
in (that Orb). It was like the water of the pitcher when it is (still) in the river,
before it comes into the pitcher. Then when the 12 (equal zodiacal regions)
were supposed in it (i.e. in the Isotropic Orb, and subsequently appeared in the
second orb of the fixed stars, which has in it the zodiacal constellations), it
was given specific timings, and He called them the ‘(zodiacal) constellations’
in that (isotropic) orb - which is Allah’s saying: ‘ by the heaven ’ - (swearing
by it) because of its loftiness above us - ‘ that has the constellations (burujf
(85:1). So they are these suppositions for timing.
So (when) a person stands (on the Earth) and this orb rotates around him,
and this person has been given sight to look at these (spatial) suppositions,
through the distinguishing signs (of the zodiacal constellations) that were
determined in (the outermost sphere), then (that person) can distinguish
some of its parts from others, by these distinguishing signs that are made to
be references pointing to it. So (this person) fixes their eye on one supposed
(area) of it, I mean on the distinguishing sign (of this or that constellation),
and then the (zodiacal) orb rotates with this supposed distinguishing sign
that this observer has fixed their eye on, until it disappears (from his sight).
This continues, as long as they continues standing in their place, until (even-
tually) this sign comes back to them (in the same position). Then at that
point they know that this (zodiacal) orb had completed one cycle with
respect to this observer - not with respect to the orb itself (because the orbs’
real motion takes much longer time than a day, see section 1.4). Then we
called this cycle a ‘day’ (vawm, defined here according to the far-away
sphere of the zodiacal stars and not according to the Sun, which is the day
known in astronomy as the ‘sidereal day’).
Then after that, Allah created in the fourth Heaven (celestial sphere) of
the seven Heavens a lighted planet that has a huge body, and it was called in
the Arabic tongue ‘ Shams’ [i.e. the Sun; but the Arabs used to call both the
planets ( kawakib ) and the stars ( nujum ) kawakib, ‘planets’ (s. kawkab), but
Ibn ‘Arabi clearly distinguishes between them]. Then it rose in the sight (of
this observer) from behind the veil (or horizon) of the Earth where this
observer stands, so they called this place of rising ‘the shining-place’
(or ‘east/orient’: mashriq), and they called the rising a ‘shining-forth’
56 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
( shuniq ), because this bright planet rose up from it and lighted up the atmos-
phere where this observer is.
So the sight of this observer kept following the motion of that planet (the
Sun) until it was opposite them (in the middle of the sky), so he called this (state
of) opposition ‘the meridian’ ( al-istiwa ’). Then the planet began to descend
from its meridian with respect to this observer, seeking the right side of them -
not with respect to the planet itself. So they called the beginning of this descend-
ing from its meridian a ‘decline’ ( zawal ) and disposition ( duluk ). Then the sight
of this observer kept following it until the body of this planet went down, so
they called its going down ‘setting’ (ghuriib ), and they called the place where
their sight saw that it went down its ‘setting-place’ (or ‘west’: maghrib).
Then the atmosphere became dark for him, so he called the duration of
the lightning of the atmosphere, from the rising of this planet till its setting,
a ‘daytime’ ( nahdr ). (This name is) derived from ‘ al-nahr ’ (the river),
because the spreading out of the light in (that daytime) is like the spreading
out of water in the bed of the river.
So this observer remained in the dark until that planet that is called the
Sun (again) rose from the place that they called the orient, in the sight of
this observer - (but) from another (different) place, close to this place that it
rose from yesterday, (by a distance) which is called a ‘degree’ ( daraja ). So
they called the duration of the darkness in which they were from the time of
the setting of the Sun till its rising a night ( layl ). So the day (yawm , the con-
ventional rotational day and not the sidereal day) is the sum of the daytime
(nahdr) and the night (layl). And he called the positions where this planet
rises everyday ‘degrees’ (darajat).
Then they saw that this bright planet, which is called the Sun, moves
between those estimated suppositions (marked by the different zodiacal
signs) in the (Isotropic) circumferential orb, one degree after another, until it
cuts through that (first supposed position) through these risings called days,
such that when it completes cutting through one supposed (position), it starts
cutting through another supposition, until it completes (going through all)
the 12 suppositions by cutting (them). Then it starts another cycle by cutting
through these supposed positions (again). So they called (the time) from the
begimiing of cutting each supposed position till the end of cutting that (par-
ticular zodiacal) supposed position a ‘month’ (shahr)\ and they called (the
Sun’s) cutting through all those (12 zodiacal) suppositions a ‘year’ (sana).
Thus it has become clear to you that the night, daytime, day, month and
year, are called ‘timings’ (awqat), and (also) it gets shorter till what is called
hours and less - that all that does not have (real) existence in its essence, but
that they are only relations and relative connections (nisab/iddfat). But what
is (actually) existing is (only) the essence of the orb and the planet, not the
essence of the timing and time, since they, I mean the times, are only suppo-
sitions within it. So thus you see now that ‘time’ is (only) an expression for
something (humanly) imagined, in which these ‘timings’ are only supposed.
[1.387.30-388]
Ibn ‘ Arabi ’s concept of time 57
So the day ( yawm ) for Ibn ‘Arabi is like our usual day: i.e. the full revolution of
the heavens as we see it from the Earth, which is conventionally measured
according to the motion of the Sun. This definition of the day works perfectly for
practical issues, such as determining prayer times. But if we want to be more
accurate, the day indeed is the full revolution of the orb of the fixed stars [Ayyam
Al-Sha’n : 6] - which is in reality (i.e. as we know today), a single full cycle of
the motion of the Earth around itself with relation to far-away stars, not with
relation to the Sun. That is why Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that the ‘day’ {yawm ) actually
existed even before the creation of the seven planets including the Sun and the
Earth, while the earthly daytime and night-time {nahar and layl) were defined
only after the creation of the Earth and the Sun. He says that
When Allah caused these higher orbs to rotate, He created ‘days’ in the
first orb (that is the isotropic orb, because it is the first orb to be created
in Nature) and defined it in relation to the second orb (that is the orb of
fixed-stars or the zodiacal constellations) which has the apparently fixed
planets (stars). . . . Then He created also the Sun, so the daytime and night
are caused by the creation of the Sun (that appears) in the day. But the
‘day’ [i.e. the sidereal day; defined by the rotation of the highest sphere(s)]
existed before (the Sun’s creation) ... so when the orb of the zodiac rotates
one cycle, it is called the ‘day’ in which ‘ Allah created the heavens and the
Earth {in six days)’ .
[1.140.30]
As we also showed in the previous chapter, Ibn ‘Arabi showed on many occa-
sions that all the stars are moving at very high speeds. He also showed that the
stars that form the zodiac signs are, like other stars, very far away, which is why
we do not realize their motion. So practically we consider these stars as fixed
and therefore as a reference, but in fact the reference should be the Isotropic Orb,
because it is the one that encompasses all other (material) orbs. However,
because this orb has no any distinguishing sign, it can not be used as a reference.
Therefore, to be more accurate, we have to measure the day not relative to the
Sun but relative to stars, the constellations ‘from Nath to Nath, from Butayn to
Butayn or from Thuravya to Thurayya ’ 19 [Ayyam Al-Sha’n : 6] - since it is not
possible to measure it relative to the Isotropic Orb which does not have any dis-
tinguishing feature. In astronomy, this is called the ‘sidereal day’, which is about
four minutes longer than the normal (rotational) day. The difference is due to the
Earth’s rotation around the Sun at the same time it spins around its axis, which
causes the sidereal day to become slightly longer. Although Ibn ‘Arabi accepts
the usual concept of the day that is our normal day (from sunrise to sunrise) for
daily needs, such as knowing the time of prayers [1.388.14], he clearly distin-
guishes between the sidereal day and the normal day when it comes to critical
issues such as the ‘intertwined days’ and the ‘taken-out days’ that we shall
explain in Chapter 4.
The real meaning of ‘day’ comes from the fact that in this day Allah creates
58 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
the whole manifest world - i.e. the whole 360 degrees of the orb or the outermost
celestial sphere, the ‘Pedestal’ - in it. This does not at all contradict the many
verses in the Qur’an and other holy Books stating that Allah created the Heavens
and the Earth An six days’ (‘ and then ’ - on the seventh day - ‘ He mounted on the
Throne ’) (see the Qur’an: 7:54, 10:3, 11:7, 25:59, 32:4, 50:38 and 57:4) because
we only witness the last day (‘Saturday’, al-sabt) out of these seven days, while
the other six days of creation are actually included in it as space (see section 3.6).
Therefore, unlike some other Muslim theologians, Ibn ‘Arabi does not find any
difficulty in explaining those verses in the Qur’an that talk about Allah’s creating
the Heavens and the Earth in six days. Most religious scholars suggested that
Allah meant ‘assumed days’, such that if days had actually existed then, then the
time of this creation would have been six days, because they could not conceive
of days before the creation of the Sun and the Earth. But Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that
the creation of the Sun only divided the day (yawm ) into daytime and night-time.
So he gives a dramatically different cosmological meaning to the process of crea-
tion in a ‘Week’ (six days plus Saturday) - as the creation of space-time at every
moment - and not the commonly understood meaning that it took Allah a current
earthly week to finish the creation.
However, as already noted, Ibn ‘Arabi did observe that there was a difference
between the Arabs and some non- Arab ( ‘ ajam ) groups in their conventional defi-
nitions of the ‘day’, in that the Arabs considered the day to extend from sunset to
sunset, while others considered it to extend from sunrise to sunrise. So for the
Arabs, the night precedes daytime, while for non-Arabs it is the reverse. This
matter has no effect on the length of the whole day itself, but its implications do
have an effect on the actual unit of day and especially on its spiritual and
symbolic meanings, because
For the Arabs and the Arabic timing, it has been traditionally agreed that
the night precedes daytime, since originally the Creator of time, Allah the
Exalted, says: ‘ and a token unto them is night; We strip the day out of it . . .’
(36:37). So He made the night as the origin and took the day out of it, just as
the skin is stripped off the sheep. So the (initial) appearance is to the night,
and the day was hidden in it, just as the skin of the sheep appears and covers
the sheep until it is stripped off. So the witnessed world ( ‘alam al-shahada)
was stripped off the unseen realm ( al-ghayb ), and our existence was stripped
off the non-existence. So the knowledge of the Arabs advanced that of the
non- Arabs, because the (i.e. the non- Arab) calculations are solar-based: they
consider that the daytime precedes the night, and they have some right (to
maintain that) in this (same Qur’anic) verse, which continues . . . ‘then they
are in darkness ’, for ‘then’ here refers to the present time or the future time,
and the thing will not be in darkness until the coming of the night, in this
verse. So (from their perspective), the daytime was like a cover on the night
and then it was taken out or removed, so ‘ they are in darkness’ ; so the night
appeared which causes darkness, so the people are in darkness.
[1.716.9, also in Ayyam Al-Sha’n, 7]
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 59
2.13 Days of other orbs and divine names
Ibn "Arab? then extends the meaning of the normal ‘day’ as described above to
the spheres of all planets (and stars) and even to symbolic ‘spheres’ (i.e. the orbs
of spirits and divine Names), where he calls the period - i.e. full revolution of
each particular orb - the ‘day’ that corresponds to this specific orb. In this way
there are shorter days and longer days, depending on the relevant orb:
and when Allah caused the isotropic orb to rotate . . . and made its full cycle
a complete day (i.e. the normal day) without daytime and night ... So ‘Days’
are different: some Days are a half-cycle, some Days a full cycle, some Days
28 cycles (days); and some are more than that, (all the way up) until the ‘Day
of ascending ways’ (yawm dhu-al-ma‘arij , of 50,000 years, described in the
Qur’an, 70:4), or less than that (all the way down) until the ‘Day of event’; so
the degrees of Days change between these two (extremes of the) Days.
[III. 433. 35]
There is no maximum limit to the ‘Day’ that one can count [1.292.17], but there
is a minimum limit. The maximum limit is the Age ( al-dahr ), which is one
unique day that does not repeat and has no daytime and night [III. 202. 5]. But
this Age is infinite, whereas the smallest Day is the ‘singular day’ ( al-yawm al-
fard) or the ‘Day of event’ (yawm al-sha’n) [1.292.16], which is that Day in
which Allah is upon one task (55:29). From the meaning of the ‘singular day’ as
the time in which Allah creates by one single act every entity in the world, we
can generalize to all other days: the ‘Day’ of every orb is the time in which that
orb affects every entity in the world (i.e. by making a full revolution).
But again we should not confuse - as we have seen above - the revolution of
a planet (such as the Earth) around its axis in respect to its Sun, and in respect to
distant stars (which are appropriately considered fixed). In astronomy, the first
revolution is called a ‘rotational’ day, while the other is called the ‘sidereal’ day.
The sidereal day is the time the Earth takes to rotate 360 degrees, in relation to
distant stars. This equals, in modern calculations, 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.09
seconds, while the mean solar day is 24 hours. The Earth actually rotates 360.98
degrees in 24 hours; the difference is caused by the Earth’s orbital motion
(around the Sun). Similarly all other planets or orbs have their own respective
sidereal and orbital ‘days’. Also, the Moon completes a cycle around the Earth
once every 27.3 days, with reference to distant stars, so this is the sidereal lunar
month. The normal lunar month used in Islamic calendar calculations, though, is
the time interval between new moons as observed from Earth, which equals 29.5
days; this is called the ‘synodic’ lunar month. Therefore, the Moon’s ‘Day’, if
calculated by Ibn ‘Arabi’s approach to the Earth’s sidereal day, should be the
sidereal lunar month. But we shall see in section 3.2 that Ibn ‘Arabi insists that
the lunar month equals 28 days exactly.
Ibn ‘Arabi made it clear in several places in his Futuhat [1.141.17, III. 549. 3]
and other books that the fixed stars are not actually fixed at all, but that we can
not notice their motion from Earth owing to the large distance, because our age
60 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
is too short to notice their motion despite their very high speed (an observation
well confirmed by modern cosmology). Therefore when we say ‘the day is the
period of motion of fixed stars’, we now know today that this apparent motion is
caused by the motion of the Earth and not the stars, but since we move with the
Earth, we think that the stars are moving. Indeed the actual motions of the orbs
of stars have much longer periods, as is well known in modern astronomy. Actu-
ally, Ibn ‘Arabi, following the accepted cosmological theories of his day, differ-
entiates between two kinds of motion of the celestial orbs: natural or intrinsic
motion, and forced or extrinsic motion:
The smallest Day is that which we count as the motion of the circumferen-
tial orb in whose day (yawm) the night ( lay /) and daytime ( nahdr ) appear.
So that is the shortest day for the Arabs (i.e. in their language), and it corre-
sponds to the largest orb, because it rules everything inside it. The motion of
everything inside this orb in the daytime and night is a forced motion by this
orb, through which it forces (a movement of) all the orbs that it surrounds.
And each one of these orbs also has a natural (inherent) motion. So every
orb below the surrounding orb has two motions at the same time: a natural
motion and a forced motion. And each natural motion in every orb has a
specific day which is measured in terms of the days of the surrounding orb.
[1.121.25]
So, for example - according to modern astronomy - the Moon naturally rotates
around the Earth in about 28 days while at the same time it is forced to move with
the Earth around the Sun. Likewise with most other orbs of the planets, in terms
of the astronomy of Ibn ‘Arabi’s time: the intrinsic motion of those orbs defines a
specific ‘day’ for every one, which equals the time needed to make full revolution
around the Earth. In general, however, the day is the revolution of the specific
orb, so it may have many possible lengths or measurements depending on the ref-
erence point (i.e. whether it is observed from the Earth or from other orbs or
planets), but here we only consider the days of the orbs with relation to the Earth.
The relation between Days and orbs is that - in general - the longer Day cor-
responds to the larger orb. But this is not true for the isotropic orb, which is the
first and largest (material) orb. The Day of this orb is the smallest Day, which is
the day that we count, i.e. 24 hours. This is because the motion of this orb is a
natural motion, whereas the motions of other orbs are a combination of this
first natural motion (which is a forced motion on those other orbs) and another
natural motion which is intrinsic to every orb. But if we consider the motion of
the isotropic orb as expressing in reality the motion of the Earth around itself, as
in modem astronomy, we can then generalize and say that the larger the orb, the
bigger its Day. However, still another factor that affects the length of the Day is
the speed of motion of the relevant orb. Therefore, the day that we count - i.e.
the 24 hours - is actually the shortest Day, though Ibn ‘Arabi sometimes men-
tions that a day could be a half cycle of the prime cycle of the Isotropic Orb,
which is the 24-hour day [III. 434. 2], which is equal to the daytime ( nahdr ), but
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 61
otherwise the day itself as the revolution of the Isotropic Orb is the smallest day.
Then comes the Day of the Moon, which is 28 Earth days (which is a little less
than the actual day of the Moon that we call the lunar month; we shall give a
more detailed discussion of this point in section 3.2), and so on [11.441.29].
As in the case of the material orbs of stars and planets, Ibn 'Arab! adds that
every spirit and every divine Name of Allah has its own ‘Day’. That is because
every spirit and divine Name has effects on the world beneath it. So when they
complete a full revolution around the world (i.e. without material motion but
with regard to their effects on every entity), this is their ‘Day’.
On the basis of particular references in the Qur’an and Hadith, Ibn ‘Arab!
assigns Days with specific length to some divine Names. In addition to ‘the
Lord’s day’ which equals ‘ one thousand years of what you count ’ (32:5), and
‘the day of the ascending ways’ (dhu al-ma' arij), which equals fifty thousand
years according to the Qur’an (70:4), Ibn ‘Arabi also mentions ‘the day of MithV
(‘the Like’, i.e. the cosmic ‘Likeness’ of the divine, referring to the famous
Qur’anic verse 42:11 - the ‘Perfect Human Being’ ( al-insan al-kamif), who is
created, according to a famous hadith, ‘on the Image of the All-Merciful’, see
SPK: 27-30: 276) which equals seven thousand years [Ayyam Al-Sha ’n: 18], and
another day which equals 6,454.54545 years, though he does not mention the
relevant Name [1.121.23]. He also mentions yet another day which equals three
thousand years, but says that he does not know the corresponding Name
[III. 238. 13]. All this is summarized in Table 2.1 which shows the length of some
other days, in addition to those just mentioned above.
2.14 The daytime and night-time
Ibn ‘Arabi not only extends the concept of the known day to the orbs and divine
Names, as we have seen above, but also he gives a very broad meaning of daytime
and night ( nahar and layl), suggesting that every orb and divine Name has a corre-
sponding daytime and night like our normal daytime and night. Just as our daytime
and night are caused by the apparent motion of the Sun, these other infinitely
varied daytimes and nights are all caused through the manifestation of the primary
divine Name ‘the Light ’ [III. 201. 35], which brings into manifest existence in the
world all the transient images or ‘likenesses’ of the infinite divine Names:
so when the divine Name ‘the Light ’ is considered (from the perspective of)
the existence of the exalted shadow imaged forth (in the cosmos: i.e. the
First Intellect or ‘Perfect Human Being’) and (from the perspective of) its
rising upon those who are in the world, then the world (i.e. the creatures)
which are in this image will call this rising, until the time it sets for them, a
‘daytime’, and from the time it sets for them, they call it a ‘night’. But that
(divine) Light is still present for this shadow, just as the Sun is still present
in respect to the Earth both in its rising and in its setting (though it is visible
to us only in its rising) ... so in reality (that appearance of night) it is (only)
a shadow, although they call it ‘darkness’. ... So know this!
62 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
Then Allah made these days which we know, that are caused by the motion
of the isotropic orb, and the daytime and night that are caused by the heart
(of the cosmos) - I mean the Sun - in order to determine through them the
effects of the divine Days that belong to the Names.
[ffl.202.6]
Thus, as we have just seen, every divine Name has a specific Day (with its cor-
responding daytime and night), and, when the Day of one divine Name appears
to be over, a Day of another Name starts, and so on; and all these are included in
the eternal Day of the divine Name ‘the Age’:
And every divine Name, known or unknown, has a (specific) Day in the
Age, and these are the ‘Days of Allah’ - and all, in reality, are the Days of
Allah, but most people do not know that. So if we descend from the divine
Names to the Day of the First Intellect, we find that its effect in the Univer-
sal Soul divided it into daytime and night: its ‘night’ in respect to the Soul
is when the Intellect turns away from her when he approaches his Lord to
benefit (by receiving knowledge from Him), and its daytime in respect to
this Soul is when he approaches her to benefit her, so this is her daytime.
And through this effect Allah made in the Sold two forces: the intellec-
tive force, which is her ‘night’ in the world below her; and the active force,
which is her daytime in the world below her - and that (contrast of these
two universal powers) is called unseen and seen, letter and meaning, abstract
and sensed. So this causes in the Soul a Day that has no daytime and night,
while in the world it has (what we perceive as) daytime and night. The same
applies to the Day of the ‘Universal Matter’ ( al-hayiila al-kull): its daytime
is its essence, and its night is its form, while it is in itself a Day with no
daytime and night.
[III.202.20]
This (i.e. the relation between the two forces of the Soul and the two phases of
the day, the daytime and the night-time) leads to a very important conclusion
that we (physically) move in the world in the ‘daytime’ ( nahar ) of the Soul, and
that we (psychically or spiritually) perceive the world in the ‘night-time’ of the
Soul - a key symbolism of the Qur’an and Hadith that Ibn ‘Arabi develops at
length throughout the Futuhat and other works. This motion-perception that
happens in the ‘day’ (yawm ) of the Soul is a cyclic unit action that repeats every
day (in fact, every moment for us). In other words: we either move or perceive,
but not at the same time.
Likewise, the Day in every orb is a Day with no daytime and night for that
orb, but with the appearance of a daytime and night for (some of) the world
below it. Ibn ‘Arabi even gives an excellent example, using a detailed scientific
explanation about something that we are familiar with nowadays, the phenomena
of daytime and night on the Earth:
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 63
And Allah caused the (normal) daytime and night by creating the Sun and
its (apparent) rising and setting on the Earth - whereas in the sky it is all
light, with no daytime and night. The outlet of the night from the sphere of
the Earth where the Sun sets is cone-shaped.
[III. 203. 22]
This is exactly what everybody admits now as a fact of science, shown in Figure
2.2 for more clarification.
So with regard to us, we are necessarily either under the effect of the day-
times of particular divine Names of Allah or under the effect of their nights,
depending on Allah’s manifestation for each one of us and in everything else.
But these Names in themselves have no daytime and night, but rather are all
light. Ibn ‘Arabi explains this differing influence of the different divine Names
further by saying:
So its night is the ‘unseen’ ( ghayb ), which is what is hidden away from us
but at the same time affects the high Spirits which are above Nature and
also the roaming Spirits; and its daytime is the ‘seen’, which is its effect in
natural bodies down to the last elementary body.
[III. 201. 15]
Ibn ‘Arabi also gives more details about the different manifestations of God to
different kinds of bodies and spirits, by dividing the daytime and night each into
three thirds:
and when Allah divided His Days like that, He made its night three parts and
its daytime three parts; so He, the Exalted, descends down to His servants in
the last third of the night of His Days [Kanz: 3355, 3388], and that is when
He is manifested to the natural spirits ( al-arwah al-tabViyya) that manage the
material bodies; and in the middle third He manifests to the subjected spirits
(i al-anvah al-musakhkhara, or the angels of each heavenly sphere), and in the
first third He manifests to the ‘dominating spirits’ ( al-arwah al-muhaymina).
And He divided the day of these days into three parts, and in every part
He is manifested to the world of bodies - for they are always praising Allah.
So in the first third He is manifested to the subtle bodies ( al-ajsam al-latifa)
Figure 2.2 The daytime and night in the sky.
Note
Night is only in some regions below the corresponding orb, whereas in the orb itself it is all day. And
in the case of the normal day on the Earth, the outlet of the night is extended in space as a cone.
64 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
which are unseen by sight, in the middle third He is manifested to the trans-
parent materials ( al-ajsam al-shajfafa), and in the last third He is manifested
to the dense materials ( al-ajsam al-kathifa). Without this manifestation, they
would not be able to know Whom they are praising.
[III.20 1.24]
2.15 The ‘single day’
As we have seen above, Ibn ‘Arabi declares that there is an indivisible duration
of time [IV. 425. 8] that is the smallest possible time or Day. Ibn ‘Arabi calls this
Day ‘the single Day or time’ ( al-zaman al-fard) or ‘the Day of task or event’
( yawm al-sha ’n). Another translation of sha 'n is possibly ‘concern’, which could
also convey the general meaning of the underlying Qur’anic verse, repeatedly
cited by Ibn ‘Arabi and it forms the basis of his unique view of the discrete
nature of time: kulla yawm Huwa fi sha’n (55:29). But we prefer to use the
words ‘event’ or ‘task’ in order to stress the meaning that in each such momen-
tary ‘Day’, Allah acts in the world by creating the totality of all events. Ibn
‘Arabi himself stressed this meaning: ‘(The sha’n) is nothing but the (single uni-
versal creative divine) Act, which is what He creates in each day of the smallest
Days, which is the single time that is indivisible’ [IV. 425. 11].
In every ‘Day of event’, Allah re-creates the world in a new image that is
similar to the previous one, but with slight changes. Or in other words, in every
‘Day of event’ Allah causes one unique, singular Act in the world, because Allah
is One and His Command (amr) is one ( Al-Masail , no. 26). However, this same
single Act will have different results on the different entities in the world,
depending on the capabilities and characteristics of each individual creature. For
example, when Allah inspires the Universal Soul ( al-nafs al-lailliyyd) to move
the element of fire ( ‘unsur al-nar) in order to heat the world, the effects of this
single Act depend greatly on the individual creatures, so those who are ready to
bum will bum, and those who accept heat will be heated, and so on [ Ayyam Al-
Sha’n : 11]: Also he says in the Futuhat that ‘the task in relation to the Real is
one from Him - but in relation to the recipients ( qawabil ) of the whole world, it
is many tasks (events) that - were it not (all) confined by existence - we could
call infinite (because everything that physically exists is necessarily finite)’
[11.82. 6],
The ‘Day of event’ is a single and indivisible duration of time that equals the
entire earthly global day at each instant, but because the Universal Intellect scans
in this ‘Day’ N number of states (that is N/2 for bodies in its ‘day’ and N/2 for
spirits in its ‘night’), it appears to the observer, who is one of these states, as
infinitely divisible, because it is extremely small: 24 x 60 x 60/N seconds, and N
is surely unimaginably huge. This is simply because the observer exists only for
this infinitesimal amount of time during every ‘Day of event’. This infinitesimal
amount of time is what we call ‘now’ ( al-an ), the ‘ moment ’ (see the following
section) or the ‘ presence ’ - and this is the only real part of the imaginary time
(see also section 6.8).
Ibn ‘ Arabi ’s concept of time 65
We must note that the isotropic orb, which is the first orb beneath the divine
‘Pedestal’, is not material. Therefore we can not differentiate between its ‘parts’,
since there are no distinguishing features in this orb - which indeed is why it is
called ‘isotropic’ {atlas), or the same in all directions. Therefore we can not
measure the length of our normal day which is actually the ‘day’ of this isotropic
orb (as we explained above in the previous section), and which also equals the
Day of event. But rather we use this perceptible earthly day as a measure of
other days, even though in itself it is an unknown duration of time. Although we
divide it into 24 hours, each of which has 60 minutes of 60 seconds, all this is
mere convention. We can not measure anything by its parts, so in order to
measure this day, which is the period of the first orb, we need to compare it to
other days ‘before’ it. But since it is the first day, we can not actually measure it:
‘and when Allah created this first orb, it rotated a cycle which is unknown to
other than Allah, the most Exalted, because there are no finite bodies above it,
since it is the first transparent body’ [1.122.29].
Moreover, Ibn ‘Arabi also observes that since the isotropic orb has only one
cycle, it can not be described as having an end, although we assume in it a begin-
ning and an end [111.548.29].
In many cases Ibn ‘Arabi calls this smallest, singular day ‘the day of Breath’
[11.520.33, III. 127.335], and he even gives a measure of this day through the
Breath: ‘and the day is the magnitude of the breath of the Breather in the single
time’ [11.171.23]. This is because in this instantaneous ‘Day’ the divine creative
‘Breath’ emerges and returns to its Source, with its manifestation being the realm
of all the divine Tetters’, ‘Words’, or ‘sounds’ repeatedly produced by this
Breath. As we shall see in section 7.8, Ibn ‘Arabi visualizes the divine ‘Word’ as
essentially composed of vibrations or sounds that are the Tetters’ that form all
the manifest objects and entities of the cosmos, just as letters form the words in
human language. All words are composed of letters, and all letters are composed
of the letter or initial out-breathing vowel sound alif, the first letter of the Arabic
alphabet [1.78.22]. So in each single Day, this creative divine sound is produced
by the divine Breath, and the manifest world is in reality the succession of these
sounds or breaths. We shall explore this important issue in section 7.8 below.
Also in section 6.8 we shall explain the creation scenario according the Single
Monad model of the cosmos.
2.16 Moments
In addition to the common Arabic words used for ‘time’ - zaman and zaman -
al-waqt is also widely used, which means the state ‘you are always described
by, so you are always under the rule of the moment’ [11.538.32]. We have
already mentioned above the difference between zaman and zaman, and shown
that Ibn ‘Arabi uses them basically in the same context, although he tends to use
zaman for fixed and short times, such as the Single Time. Al-waqt, however,
sometimes has a different meaning and technical usage for Ibn ‘Arabi. He notes
that:
66 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
(this technical meaning of al-waqt) is in fact - by the convention of the Folk
(the Sufis) - the state in which you are in the time being. So it is a thing
that exists (now) between two non-existents (the past and the present; not as
time but as things that have passed or are yet to come). And also it has been
said that al-waqt is what comes upon them from the Real by (the Real’s)
managing ( tasrif) them, not by what they choose for themselves.
[11.538.35]
Ibn ‘Arabi elsewhere gives many equivalent meanings of al-waqt. For example
he defines al-waqt in his short dictionary of Sufi terms (Issttildhat Al-Sufiyya: 8)
by saying that: ‘ al-waqt is your state in the time being, without any relation to
the past or to the future’. But at the end he says that
the divine (ontological) basis of al-waqt is His, the most Exalted, describ-
ing Himself as being each day upon one task (50:29): so al-waqt is what
He is in - in the root - but it appears in the offspring that is the cosmos. So
the ‘tasks’ ( shu’un ) of the Real appear in the entities of the world (the con-
tingent things). So al-waqt in fact is what you are in, and what you are in is
your aptitude itself. So what appears in you of the tasks of the Real that He
is in, is only what your aptitude demands: so the task is already designated,
because the aptitude of the possible with its possibility led the task of the
Real to bring it into existence. Do not you see that the non-existent does not
accept the existence (or the task of the Real), because it has no aptitude for
that. So the (outward, manifest) origin of al-waqt is from the cosmos, not
from the Real, and it is a kind of supposition ( taqdir ) and supposition has no
effect ( hukm ) on other than the creation (i.e. it has no rule on the Real).
[II. 539. 2]
In this way al-waqt is the current moment of time; it is our portion of the single
Day; so the single Day with regard to the whole world is the global reality
encompassing all of manifest existence - including all on Earth - at any instant.
But with regard to each entity in the world, it is a moment, since the time of each
entity in the world is its waqt. This is why the Sufi was said to be ‘the son of his
moment ( ibn waqtihi)' , as indicated by Gerhard Bowering in his study of ‘Ibn
al-‘Arabi’s Concept of Time’. In this paper, Bowering also showed that ‘In Ibn
al-‘Arabi’s view there is an infinite cluster of moments, conceived as time atoms
without duration, but they are mere instances of preparedness in which are actu-
alized those possibilities that God has ordained to be affected in a human being’
(Bowering 1992: 81).
However, the issue of whether the moment has a duration or not is extremely
delicate. If we choose to say it has not, then how can the extent of the entire per-
ceived day be composed of zero-length moments? We must keep in mind that
the number of entities in the world ( N ), though very big, is finite. Therefore the
single Day equals N multiplied by the duration of the moment. But if we choose
to assert the actual duration of the ‘moment’, it would lead to questions already
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 67
encountered in earlier philosophers’ paradoxes about time, such as ‘What exactly
happens during the moment?’ and ‘Does the event that takes a moment pop up
at once or gradually?’ For if at once, then ‘Why does it take a duration?’ and if
gradually, then ‘What are the sub-events, and how many are they?’
Ibn ‘Arabi did not give any direct insight about this subtle and highly impor-
tant cosmological issue. However, in his cosmological treatise ‘Uqlat Al-Mustaw-
fiz, he spoke briefly about the Greatest Element ( al - ‘unsur al-a'zam) whom Allah
created at once, and we shall show in section 6.4 that the Single Monad, though it
is an indivisible unit, is composed of or made by (or from different manifestations
of) this Greatest Element. Therefore, the moment (that corresponds in fact to the
creation of the Single Monad) should also be composed of ‘sub-moments’ (that
correspond to the creation of the Greatest Element). We can now affirm, accord-
ing to Ibn ‘Arabi, that those sub-moments are utterly indivisible because he said
that Allah creates the Greatest Element ‘at once’. The questions of ‘Do those sub-
moments have non-zero durations?’ and ‘How many sub-moments are in the
moment?’ remain open, though a first speculation is that the process is similar to
the normal day where the Sun rises and sets to define the daytime and the night.
There is some support for this in the comparison Ibn ‘Arabi usually makes
between the creation of the Perfect Human Being (that is the Single Monad) and
the creation of the world, and more specifically the motion of the Sun during the
day. We shall talk about this comparison in section 6.7. Therefore, the Day of the
Single Monad (that is the moment) may look smooth and composed of a continu-
ous flow of time. But it is quite possible that the same sets of questions may be
repeated and similar quantization takes place at smaller scales.
When the Single Monad (that is the Universal Intellect) faces his Lord, this is
the ‘night’ for the Universal Soul; and when the Intellect (‘ aql , masculine in
Arabic) faces the Universal Soul ( nafs , a feminine noun) this is her daytime
[III. 202. 22], so this is the single Day of the Single Monad that is the Universal
Intellect, and therefore the moments that are the days of the sub-entities of the
world (which are the sub-intellects) should be also in the same way. But we have
not seen any reference in Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings with any detail about the exact
relation between the Single Monad and the Greatest Element, and hence about
the moment and its possible constituents. On the contrary, Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that
this is a divine secret and that he was sworn not to disclose it {‘Uqlat Al-Mus-
tawfiz: 38).
2.17 The future, the present and the past
We have already said that the future and the past do not exist; the real time is
only the present, the now {al- ’an) or the current state {al-hal). Also, we
explained that the Age is an endless circle that does not have a beginning or an
end for itself; it is all an ‘eternally ongoing present’ which is called al-an al-
da ’im or - as Ibn ‘Arabi calls it elsewhere - ‘the continuous existence’ {al-wujud
al-mustamirr ) [11.69.13, IV. 362. 32]. However, we live in time at the present
now, and we feel the past and the future, so how can they be non-existence?
68 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
As we noted earlier, Ibn ‘Arabi often explains that the essential realities
[a'yan: the essences or entities] of the manifest world have always been existing
in the Knowledge of Allah, though not actual real existence [11.309.25, 1.538.32].
When Allah creates the world, it appears in real existence in the same reality as
it is determined in Allah’s knowledge. Allah does not create all the successive
states of the world at once, but in a series process; so the creations are brought
into existence one by one. Of course this is true in relation to us, but with rela-
tion to Allah, Who is out of time, the word ‘series’ would be meaningless
because it is confined to time. For Allah nothing was changed because the crea-
tion existed in His knowledge eternally. So because we are sub-entities in this
whole creation, we encounter time as past, present and future, but in fact only
the present exists. The past is ‘a relegation of an actualized non-existence’, and
the future is ‘a pure non-existence’ [11.69.13], whereas the present now {al-an)
or state ( hal ) is ‘what makes the distinction between them’ [11.56.11], ‘so without
the (current) state {hal) there would be no distinction between the past non-exist-
ence and the future non-existence, so the now ( al-dn ) is like a partition
( barzakhy [III. 108. 16]. ‘Therefore the present state {al-hal) is described by the
continuous existence and it is the constant and immutable rule, and anything
other than the present state is non-existence and could not be a firm (absolute)
existence’ [IV. 362. 33].
2.18 Eternity
As we have already noted, the English word ‘eternity’ has two different Arabic
synonyms: ‘ azaV and ‘abad . Azal is eternity without beginning ( a parte ante),
and abad is eternity without end ( a parte post). Ibn ‘Arabi showed in his short
treatise The Book of Eternity {Kitab Al-Azal) that ‘there is nothing called eternity
at all’ {Kitab Al-Azal: 8-9). Eternity is in fact the negation of a beginning (or
end), not endless extension: that is why Ibn ‘Arabi says that eternity is a negative
attribute. In this way there is no meaning to asking whether there has been any
extension of time between the existence of Allah and the existence of the world,
because Allah creates the world out of time, as discussed in section 2.3 above.
There has been a long debate amongst Islamic philosophers and theologians
about the meaning of eternity and time with relation to Allah. Some philosophers
say, for example, that Allah was talking in eternity in His eternal Speech, and
that therefore He said in eternity "take off thy shoes’’ (20:12) to Moses, and
‘ worship thy Lord until certainty comes unto thee ’ (15:99) to Muhammad, peace
be upon them, and so on. They say that because clearly we can not say that Allah
uttered these words at the time of Moses or Muhammad, therefore it must be an
eternal speech. Ibn ‘Arabi, however, showed in his Kitab Al-Azal that all these
interpretations are not proper, and that they end up confining Allah to time,
which is a serious error: ‘It is more proper to say that Moses heard out of time,
because the Speaker spoke out of time. To let Moses become holy is better than
letting al-Bari’ (the Creator) be compared to us’ {Kitab Al-Azal: 5, see also al-
Masa’il, no. 131).
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 69
So if we take the correct meaning of the word ‘eternity’, which is the nega-
tion of any beginning ( azal ), we may ask: was there anyone in eternity with the
Creator or not? There has also been a long philosophical and theological debate
about that, which Ibn ‘Arabi summarizes by saying:
One group said: ‘the primordials (qudama) are four: the Creator, the Intel-
lect, the Soul and the Dust ( al-haba ’)’.
Another group said: ‘the primordials are eight (pre-existents): the
Essence and the seven descriptions’ (i.e. the seven primordial descriptions
or attributes of Allah, drawn from earlier kalam theology: ‘Life, Knowledge,
Ability, Will, Hearing, Seeing and Speaking’ [1.525.32]).
Another group said: ‘nothing is primordial but One, and He is the exalted
Real, and He is One in all aspects, but to His Essence (there is) an aspect by
which He is called Able, and so on for whatever they have made a description’.
Another group took this (last) opinion, but they added to it a (new)
concept. And this concept is called ‘the Reality of Realities’, which is
neither existing nor non-existing, but it is primordial with the primordial and
created with the created; it can be imagined, but it does not exist by itself,
like universality ( ‘alamiyya) and so on.
(Kitdb Al-Azal: 8-9)
Clearly, the Sufis are among the last group, and Ibn ‘Arabi in particular relates
the beginning of creation to ‘the Reality of Realities’ ( haqiqat al-haqa’iq), and
sometimes he calls it ‘the Universal Reality’ ( al-haqiqa al-knlliyya) or ‘the
Muhammadan Reality’ ( al-haqiqa al-muhammadiyyd). He stated in chapter 6 of
the Futuhat that the beginning of the spiritual creation is the ‘Dust’, and that the
first existent within it was the ‘Muhammadan Reality of (divine) Mercy’ ( al-
haqiqa cil-muhammadiyya al-rahmdniyya) that is not confined to space, and that
it is created from the ‘Known Reality’ ( al-haqiqat al-maluma) that can not be
described by either existence or non-existence [1.118.5]. Ibn ‘Arabi claims that
only the Sufis have introduced the concept of ‘the Reality of Realities’ ( haqiqat
al-haqa ’ iq ), although he admits that the Mu‘tazilites drew attention to something
similar to this notion when they tried to escape the accusation that their under-
standing of the divine Attributes postulated the real existence of additional reali-
ties other than the Essence of the Real [11.433. 14, SPK: 134-139].
2.19 The age
So the days are repeated cycles of different ‘orbs’, whether celestial or divine:
every orb has its own day. These days overlap with each other, so the day of the
Sun, for example, takes 360 days of our days that we count on the Earth; the day
of the Moon takes 28 normal Earth days, and so on. In one Sun day, many Moon
days pass; and in one Moon day, many normal Earth days pass - just as in one
‘Lord-day’, one thousand Sun days (Earth years) pass. Likewise, all the possible
days of all orbs and divine Names happen and repeat themselves in the ‘Day of
70 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
the Age’ that ‘is one Day that never repeats, and it has no daytime ( nahdr ) or
night’ [III.202.5]. The Day of the Age is all a ‘daytime’: it does not have a night,
because there is no orb above it; it is the truly all-encompassing orb that includes
all material and spiritual orbs.
Ibn ‘Arabi, like other Sufis, consider that ‘the Age’ ( al-dahr ) is one of the
divine Names of Allah, according to a hadith in which the Prophet Muhammad
says: ‘Do not damn the Age, for Allah is the Age’ [ Kanz : 8137]. In another
divine saying ( Hadith qudsi), Allah says: ‘the son of Adam hurts Me: he damns
the Age, and I am the Age, the command in My Hand, I circulate the daytime
and the night’ \Kanz : 8139].
Also in the Qur’an, Allah says: ‘ and they say: What is there but our life in
this world? We shall die and we live, and nothing but the Age can destroy us.
But of that they have no knowledge: they merely conjecture ’ (45:24).
In his comments on this last verse, Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that they (the disbeliev-
ers) are quite right in their claim that nothing but the Age can destroy them,
because Allah is the Age - though they did not mean that, but rather meant
simply time, and not ‘the Age’ as a name of Allah [IV. 265. 29].
We have seen above that ‘the time of a thing is its presence’: this is why Allah
is named as ‘the Age’, because the realities of everything exist in Him. So He is
‘the Age’ because the whole world (hidden and manifest), including all space and
time, from eternity without beginning ( al-azal ) to eternity without end ( al-abad):
all this is a manifestation of Allah’s divine Names - so the Age is the all-
encompassing orb of all Names [IV.266.11]. Ibn ‘Arabi explains this by saying:
Do not you see in Allah’s words (the Qur’an) when He told us about things
in the past, He then used the past tense, and He used the future tense for
things to come, and He used the present tense for the now-happening things,
. . . and if we seek for all that something that has a real existence and these
things are occurring in it - which is for them like a container - we shall find
nothing, neither by mind nor by sense, except that we find it as an imaginary
container, which is itself contained by another imaginary container, and so
on, nothing but endless illusion. So if you think rationally, you will find that
there is nothing (i.e. no ‘containing’ reality of space or time) that can be
comprehended by imagination or by the mind, nor by the senses, nothing
but the Real Existence on which our existence is based.
For this reason He named Himself to us as ‘the Age’, so that the refer-
ence can be only to Him, not to ‘time’ as imagined, because there is no
Ruler {hakim) other than Allah, and in Him appeared the realities of things
and their properties. So He is the everlasting existence, and the realities of
things with their properties appeared from behind the veil of His existence,
but because of His subtleness ( latafa ), we see the realities of things, which
are ourselves, from behind the veil of His existence without seeing Him, just
like we see the stars from behind the veil of the heavens (the orbs) and yet
we do not see the heavens.
[III. 547.1]
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time 71
Moreover, given the above definition of the Age, it is not possible to imagine a
plural form of this word in this meaning. Yet Ibn ‘Arabi himself sometimes uses
it as plural, when he speaks about the ‘first age’ or the ‘age of ages’ from which
time appeared: ‘from that (eternity) is the Prophet’s saying: “Allah is/was, and
none with Him’’ ( Kanz : 29850), and this is a rare knowing known only by the
“Solitary Sages” ( al-afrad) among men. That is what is called “the first age” and
“the age of ages”: and from this eternity ( azal ), time emerged’ [1.156.35].
This could be slightly confusing, but there are some references in Ibn ‘Arabi’s
writing that seem to parallel what is known in modem cosmology as the
‘bubbles’ model of the universe, where the universe is full of black holes that
cause a large curvature in space-time in such a way that each can be considered
as a separate space-time similar to - and as large as - our own; except that each
is only a single point in our space-time. Thus Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that ‘each part
of the world can be a cause for another world similar to it’ [1.259.25]. Also Ibn
‘Arabi considers that the origin of the world that we live in is the Universal Intel-
lect, who is originally only one of an unknown number of roaming Spirits whom
Allah created directly without any intermediaries [III. 430. 5]. Any one of these
primordial Spirits is, therefore, capable of making another universe, just like the
Universal Intellect that made our universe. Also we may recall that Allah in the
Qur’an is repeatedly called the ‘the Lord of the worlds’, in the indefinite plural,
and not only of this world. However, the Arabic word for ‘the age’ has also been
conventionally used sometimes for other related meanings such as eternity
without beginning {azal) and eternity without end {abad)\ so Ibn ‘Arabi showed
that the plural form ‘ages’ (duhur) could also be used to include or refer to all
these terms, since they all are essentially the Age [IV. 266. 5].
On the other hand, the Age is not only time, but it is also space. Because the
Age is the totally ‘encompassing orb’, it must include everything inside it, spatial
as well as temporal. As we shall show in section 3.6, the world as both space and
time is created in the seven days of the divine Week (six Days for space, plus
Saturday for time). And the Age is not more than those divine seven Days
[II. 438. 5]. Thus in Ibn ‘Arabi’s conception, space and time have the same
meaning as days, and both are unified as space-time, where the divine Week is
its basic unit, and the Age is in fact this Single Week.
2.20 Other expressions of time
In addition to the common words such as time {zaman, zaman), moment ( waqt ),
day ( yawm ), daytime {nahar) night ( lay I), eternity {azal/abad) and the age
{dahr), which we have discussed above, along with the related terms for week
{usbu), month {shahr) and year ( Sana ), which we shall discuss in Chapter 3,
there are other time expressions occasionally used by Ibn ‘Arabi with slightly
different and more specific technical meanings than in their usage by other
Muslim scholars and theologians. We want to end this chapter by looking at
some of these other temporal terms for the purpose of completeness, although
we may not need to refer to these technical terms in the rest of this book. In
72 Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of time
particular, some of these expressions became important in later forms of Islamic
thought which tried to elaborate and integrate Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas, in various
ways, with the conceptual schemas of both kalam theology and Avicennan phi-
losophy.
• Al-sarmad : this is another word for eternity, other than al-azal, al-abad and
al-dahr. Unlike kalam theologians, Ibn ‘Arabi does not use this word often.
Sarmad means ‘absolute eternity’, i.e. it includes both eternity without
beginning ( azal) and without end ( abad ). It is most widely used as an adjec-
tive, sannadi, meaning ‘everlasting’, and this is how it is used in a very
pertinent discussion of time in the Qur’an (28:71-72). Ibn ‘Arabi normally
used it [1.164.2, 1.169.26, 11.675.14, IV.29.27] in a similar manner.
• Mata : literally this word means ‘when?’, and refers to the relation of a thing
or event to time, or to other events. It is used to inquire about the time or
occurrence of an event in relation to others. Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that the
thought of time comes about due to this land of inquiry: ‘So for example if
one asks: when (mat a) did Zayd come? Then the answer may be “(he came)
when ( hum ) the Sun rose”’ [III. 546. 28].
• Al-htn: this is a (relatively short) duration of time [11.201.36, 11.263.25]; it is
also commonly used to refer to a specific future or past time [11.201.36],
usually in answer to ‘when’, as in the previous example: ‘(he came) when
(hind) the Sun rose’ [III. 546. 28].
3 The significance of the divine
week and its seven days
The elements are four mothers,
and they are the daughters of the world of (the heavenly) orbs.
We are born out of them, so our (ultimate, spiritual) being
is in the world of (spiritual) principles (arkan) and (spiritual) rulers.
The God has made our sustenance from the ears of grain (sanabil),'
from the influence ofSunbula (Virgo), 2 without sharing , 3
And He also multiplied our reward by ‘the seven ears of grain
as it was said in a saying (2:261) by One Who does not lie. A
So our time (zamdn) is seven thousands (of years),
that come through the recurrence of (moments) of radiance and intense darkness.
So see, with your intellect, seven in seven,
from seven that are not kings.
[1.292.31-293.3]
As Ibn ‘Arab! suggests in this cryptic opening poem of his key cosmological
chapter 60 of the Futuhat (explained at the end of section 3.1), although we
encounter many visible, apparent ‘days’ due to the rotation of the Earth around
its axis, which all appear to be similar to each other, ultimately we can reduce
them to only seven distinctive Days 5 depending on the kinds of events that
happen in them. Ibn ‘Arabi argues that in each Day of the seven Days of the
(actual, cosmic) ‘Week’, Allah orders the heavenly orbs to act in a special unique
manner that causes unique events and motions to appear in the entire cosmos.
However, the seven Days of these divine, creative ‘events’ or ‘tasks’ ( shu’un )
are intertwined with our normal days of the apparent earthly week in a special
manner that we shall explain in the coming chapter - and that is why we see
multiple events appearing every day.
In various sections of the Futuhat, Ibn ‘Arabi goes on to explain the impor-
tance of the divine ‘Week’ ( usbu ) and the different meanings of the seven Days
of that Week, which are rooted in the meanings of the Arabic terms for each of
those Days, running from ‘the First’ ( al-ahad , corresponding to Sunday) to ‘the
Day of rest’ ( al-sabt , corresponding to Saturday). He also shows that Saturday is
therefore the ‘Day of eternity ’ ( yawm al-abad) and that all the Days of the Week
of creation, including Saturday itself, are actually occurring on this ‘last’ Day of
74 The significance of the divine week
eternity ( al-sabt ). These distinctive conceptions can only be fully understood
after investigating Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of the actual flow of time, which we shall
explain in the following chapter; but in this chapter we shall first explain the
origin and the meaning of these seven Days of the divine creative Week, why
they have to be seven and not more or fewer, and what is the significance of each
Day.
Also in this chapter we shall explain Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique understanding of the
process of creation of the world by Allah ‘in six Days’, from Sunday to Friday.
He explains that the creation of the world in this Week corresponds to the crea-
tion of the ‘six directions’ of space (in six Days, from Sunday to Friday) and
then the appearance of this creation in time on Saturday (the Day of eternity). In
this way the Week is indeed the unit of the space-time container of the world -
or also ‘the Age’ as we explained in section 2.19. This distinctive conception of
the unification of space and time, symbolically expressed in Ibn ‘Arabi’s under-
standing of the seven Days of creation, adds an essential dimension to Relativi-
ty’s concept of space and time; as a result, for the first time in astronomy, the
‘Week’ will itself have a clear and essential cosmological significance.
3.1 The significance of the week in theology and astronomy
In most Islamic books that talk about cosmology, we find many diagrams and
tables that associate each day of the seven days of the week with specific letters
of the alphabet and specific divine Names of Allah, in addition to certain planets
and constellations or zodiacal signs. For example, Ibn ‘Arabi explained in the
long chapter 198 of the Futuhdt [11.390 — 478] the creation of the world by Allah
and the role of His divine Names on the different parts of Heavens and Earth,
and then he relates each divine Name and the thing He creates to a letter from
the Arabic alphabet, a mansion from the 28 lunar mansions (constellations), a
day of the seven days of the week, and one of the seven circulating heavenly
bodies (five planets, Sun and Moon). This type of symbolic association based on
the days of the astronomical week is also found in many other cosmological
books of other religions and cultures dealing with astrology and related
mythology.
The Egyptians once divided their 30-day months into three ten-day weeks, in
the same manner as Greeks of the same period (Goudsmit 1966: 24), but later
they changed it back to seven days. 6 More recently, the French (during the Revo-
lution, in 1792) tried to make their week ten days instead of seven; and the Rus-
sians also tried (in 1929) five-day and (in 1932) six-day weekly systems,
although they all later restored the seven-day week (Goudsmit and Claiborne
1974: 24).
So what is the importance of the week, and why does it apparently have to be
seven days in particular, while most other attempted systems making the week
three, five, six or ten days did not persist, with few exceptions such as the Maya
who used weeks/months of 20 days (Aveni 1990: 101, 185-252)? Even some
micro-organisms clearly adopt a seven-day biological cycle (Aveni 1990: 100,
The significance of the divine week 75
and Coveny and Highfield 1990: 220-259). And yet, unlike the day, the year and
the month, there is no any apparent astronomical significance to the week;
nothing cosmic happens in the heavens in seven days.
The Babylonians and the ancient Egyptians believed that each hour of the day
was ruled by one of the five then-known planets plus the Sun and the Moon, and
they named the days of the week after the names of these seven circulating
planets, as they are now used in both the Latin and Anglo-Saxon languages and
cultures (Aveni 1990: 102-106). They considered that the planet that ruled the
first hour of the day governed the entire day, so they gave the name of this planet
to the corresponding day. The same doctrine was also part of earlier Persian cos-
mology and theology (Bickerman 1968: 59). Ibn ‘Arabi also refers to the same
hypothesis [III. 203. 31],
It is interesting to note that these celestial bodies, in the same sequence, were
also used to name the days of the week in ancient India, Tibet and Burma (Parise
1982: 172). This is also true for the names of Japanese (who used the Chinese
sexagenary cycles) (Parise 1982: 215-218) days of the week, but the custom there
has been traced back only 1,000 years. Adherents of the cult of Sin at Harran,
who were known as Harranians or ‘Sabeans’ by Arabic and Syrian authors, also
named their days after the same solar system members (Langdon 1964: 154).
Like Ibn ‘Arabi, the Babylonians, the Chinese, ancient Egyptians and most
ancient civilizations considered the day named after Saturn to be the seventh day,
so they began their week with a day named after the Sun (Sunday), a practice
which was affirmed in the Bible 7 and later by the Prophet Muhammad. 8
In the Arabic linguistic usages followed in Islam, however, the names of the
days of the week do not relate to the names of any pagan gods or celestial
bodies. Before Islam, different names were used in Arabic, which were mostly
derived from certain actions people usually performed on those particular days
of the week, though some of those Arabic names might also have been derived
from the names of the planets (Al-Marzuqi 2002: 238-244). But in the later
standardized Islamic usage, apart from the day-names Jum'a (Friday) which
means ‘gathering’ and Sabt (Saturday) which means ‘rest’, the names of the days
are merely numbered from one ( al-ahad which means ‘the first’ or ‘the one’, for
Sunday) to five ( al-khamis which means ‘the fifth’ for Thursday). These names,
however, clearly suggest that Sunday ( al-ahad) is the first day of the week, as
was the case with the earlier Babylonians and Egyptians - a fact which Ibn
‘Arabi and some other Muslim authors normally take for granted, based on many
related prophetic narrations, as we shall see further below (section 3.5).
Given their centrality in Qur'anic accounts of the creation, the seven days of
the week (and their standard Arabic names) play an essential role in Ibn ‘Arabi’s
cosmology. His cosmological understanding of the week clearly has its basis in
the scriptural accounts of divine creation, but also assumes throughout that there
must be some kind of corresponding deeper effects of that (i.e. the divine crea-
tion of the seven Days of the Week) in the wider cosmos.
Finally, although there are many similarities between Ibn ‘Arabi 's doctrine
about the origin of the divine creative Week and its Days, and the cosmological
76 The significance of the divine week
perspectives and understandings of earlier ancient (mostly pagan) cultures, he
also takes great pains to stress that this cosmological schema should not be
understood as a deviation from the fundamental monotheistic teachings of Islam,
and to indicate the ways that conception is rooted in indications in both the
Qur’an and many hadith. Although Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmology, for example, relates
the seven days of the week and the orbs of the seven moving planets, as in many
ancient cosmologies, he carefully emphasizes that he does not consider these
planets as ‘gods’ at all. Thus he goes on to explain, in his explanation of the
poem (quoted at the beginning of this chapter) opening chapter 60 of the
Futiihat, that the planets and/or the angelic spirits associated with them ‘are
servants, and the servant does not deserve the name “ruler” (or “king”: malik).
And the “seven” mentioned (there) are the seven planets in the seven orbs that
appeared by the seven Days of the Week’ [1.293.4].
Following repeated indications in the Qur’an and Hadith, Ibn ‘Arab! under-
stands that those planets, along with other constellations associated with signs of
the zodiac and lunar mansions, are associated with or inhabited by certain spirits
( ruhaniyyat ) or angels whom Allah appointed and organized in a specific hierar-
chy to look after the whole cosmos beneath them, including the Earth
[III.433 — 434]. This is different from earlier cosmological doctrines, because the
pagan astrologers believed that these spirits were deities and gods, while Ibn
‘Arab! stresses that they are nothing but servants created and appointed by
Allah/’
3.2 The four main time cycles
Ibn ‘Arabi stresses that ‘everything in the world has to be based on (specific)
divine Attributes’ [1.293.5]. Although some Muslim scholars, following a
famous hadith [ Kanz : 1933, 1937], believe that the basic divine Names or
Attributes of Allah can be limited to 99, Ibn ‘Arab! considers them to be count-
less [III. 146.35], while the 99 Names that are referred to in some prophetic nar-
rations are simply the main most Beautiful Names (al-asma ’ al-husna) of Allah.
Of these many divine Names, there are four fundamental Attributes - Life
( havat ), Knowledge ( ‘Uni), Ability ( qudra ) and Will ( irada ) - that are necessary
and sufficient for Allah to be described as God. Therefore those are considered
to be the ultimate sources or ‘mothers’ ( ummahat ) of all other divine Attributes
[1.469.25] . In relation to creation, however, three more Attributes are also neces-
sary for Allah to be Creator: Hearing ( sam ' ), Seeing ( basar ) and Speaking
(kalam). Together, that makes the principal divine Attributes of Allah to be
‘seven mother attributes. . . .: Life, Knowledge, Ability, Will, Hearing, Seeing
and Speaking’ [1.525.32],
Because Allah created (the perfect) Human Being ‘according to His Image’
[1.163.20], these same divine Attributes are potentially manifest in every fully
human person (such as Adam and the prophets). Also, as Ibn ‘Arabi says, Allah
created the world and everything in it in the image of (the Perfect) Human Being
[11.652.25] , and so the world with the Human Being is ‘on the Image of the Real’
The significance of the divine week 77
- but without the Human Being it would not have this perfection [III.343.25]. So
these same attributes should be available and essential in the world as well. That
is why, he explains, the numbers four and seven play a central role in the world:
the four elements in nature (earth, water, air and fire, already mentioned in his
poem opening this chapter), the four time cycles, the seven heavens, the seven
days, and so on. The two cosmologically fundamental four fold groups that
emerged out of the four ‘mother’ Attributes (Life, Ability, Will and Power) that
are the four aspects of the divine Presence of the Essence ( al-Dhat ) are the four
earthly elements (earth, water, air and fire) and the primordial cosmological prin-
ciples of the Intellect, Soul, Dust and Nature, as in Figure 3.1.
This quadratic cosmological rule was also reflected in relation to time. There-
fore, Ibn ‘Arabi points out, there are four main time cycles within the domain of
manifest nature: the day, the week, the month and the year. These four natural
time cycles have their origin in the effects of those four elements of Nature (fire,
air, water, earth) that are originally derived from the above-mentioned four prin-
cipal divine Names (‘the mothers’). As lbn ‘Arabi says:
Figure 3. 1 The Divine Quadratic Rule.
Note
This figure is translated from the Futuhat [1.260],
78 The significance of the divine week
time is restricted to the year, month, week and day. Time is divided into
four divisions because the natural seasons are four, because the origin of
the existence of time is Nature, whose level is below the (universal) Soul
and above the ‘Dust’ ( haba ') that philosophers call the Universal Matter
(. hayula ). The influence of this (principal) quaternity ( tarbV ) in Nature is
from the influence of the (same principle of) quaternity in the divine influ-
ences from (the fundamental Names) Life, Knowledge, Ability and Will. For
by these four (Names), godship is confirmed for the God.
So the quaternity (first) became manifest in Nature. Then the (divine)
Command descended until the (principle of quaternity) appeared in the
‘biggest time’ (cycle), which is the year, so that it was divided into the four
seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. This was brought about by the
motion of the Sun through the stations (of the zodiac), which have been
divided by Nature into their (seasonal) divisions according to the (natural)
elements that are the ‘basic principles’ (of fire, air, water and earth).
[chapter 390, III.548.17]
3.2.1 The day
We have already discussed Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of the ‘day’ in Chapter 2, where
we showed that he defines the ‘day’ as all that is included within the revolution
of the Isotropic Orb, which encompasses all of material existence. This day is
astronomically defined by the rotation of the Earth and it is conventionally
divided into smaller units such as hours, minutes and seconds (see also section
4.6). The divine Day, however, is the corresponding effects (manifestations) of
each of the seven fundamental divine Names on the entire cosmos, as we shall
see further below (section 3.4). This unique divine Day is in fact the smallest
indivisible unit of time, though it equals in length the normal day as we dis-
cussed in section 2.15.
3.2.2 The week
The second time cycle is the week, which Ibn ‘Arab! - following the detailed
Qur’anic indications - considers to be the main cycle of Creation. The week
(which is seven days) has its origin in the seven main Attributes of Allah, but
until now it does not seem to have any particular astronomical significance.
However, Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique view, as explained below, gives a profound and
essential significance to the Week in terms of astronomy/cosmology as well as
the theology of creation. This will be the main focus throughout this chapter (see
in particular section 3.3 below).
3.2.3 The month
Ibn ‘Arabi distinguishes between the witnessed lunar month, which is from new
moon to another new moon, and the ‘divine Month’ which is the time needed for
The significance of the divine week 79
the Moon to perform one full revolution in the orb of the zodiac: that is, as Ibn
‘Arabi says, 28 days [III. 548. 28]. He also recognizes the solar ‘month’ as the
Sun’s observed motion throughout the zodiac, where the zodiac is convention-
ally divided into 12 parts, each corresponding to one month [1.388.20], though
he does not give any details about the length of solar months in terms of their
days. 10
3.2.4 The year
The year, for Ibn ‘Arabi, is the time needed for the Sun to perform one full revo-
lution in the orb of the zodiac [III. 548. 28], as witnessed from the Earth. Like the
Babylonians, 11 Ibn ‘Arabi considers the year to be 360 days [III. 434. 9], and not
like our calendar year of 365.25 days.
Ibn ‘Arabi regards our solar year and the solar (and lunar) month as conven-
tions set up by human observers, while the 360-day year, the 28-day month, the
(seven-day) week/Week, and the (sidereal) day/Day are divine periods of time
set up by Allah when He created the heavenly orbs and made them move
[III. 548. 27]. It is noteworthy in this regard that the 360-day year does not equal
12 of the 28-day months. These four time cycles that Ibn ‘Arabi talks about are
not meant for calendar purposes; they are said to be the actual measures of time
set up by Allah when He created the world. Moreover, Ibn ‘Arabi shows that this
non-integer ratio is preordained and essential for the vastness of creation,
because the creation is built upon the act of generation ( takwin ), and with com-
plete ratios no generation could happen; so there have to be integers and frac-
tions [II. 440. 7].
The differences between the witnessed lunar month (synodic lunar month =
29.53 days) and the divine lunar month (of 28 days), and between the witnessed
year (365.25 days) and the 360-day year, might be because of the interference of
the different motions of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon. As the Earth spins
around its axis it also rotates around the Sun, and as the Moon rotates around the
Earth it also moves with the Earth around the Sun. These interfering motions
may account for the difference. For example, if we measure the period of the
Moon relative to those stars that are apparently fixed (this is called the sidereal
lunar month), we get only 27.32 days (and not the usual 29.53 days, the observed
lunar month). The divine lunar month for Ibn ‘Arabi is 28 days because he meas-
ures that period in relation to the zodiac (far-away galaxies) or actually the Iso-
tropic Orb, and not the orb of the Sun or the constellations [1.656.13], because
those constellations are not actually fixed [III. 549. 3]. Also we have to know that
the length of the observed earthly day varies from one place to another on the
Earth and from summer to winter throughout the year, and that the normal solar
year and the normal lunar month slightly vary from time to time owing to the
influence of gravitation of other planets and stars that change their positions
inside and relative to the solar system, respectively. Thus the mean solar day in
the year 2000 is about 1.7 milliseconds longer than it was in 1900, and is slowly
getting longer. There is a possible allusion in the Qur’an to such long-term
80 The significance of the divine week
changes in the length of the year and the month, where Allah says: ‘ The quantity
of months with Allah is 12 months (in a year) by Allah ’s ordinance in the day
that (when) He created the Heavens and the Earth ’ (9:36): in other words, it
could be that the year started as 12 months each of 28 days, but that this then
changed with time as the motion of the Earth slowed down and as the solar year
became longer, and also as the lunar month became longer than 28 days.
In this regard, we should also notice that in Arabic there are two names for
the year which do not appear to have identical meanings: sana and ‘am.
Although both terms are currently used to refer to the year, it seems from the
etymological meaning of those two names and from Ibn ‘Arabi’s and Qur’anic
usage that the word sana means the original 360-day year, while ‘am - which
literally means ‘entire’ or ‘full’ - is the time needed for the Earth to make a full
revolution around the Sun, which is the slowly lengthening conventional year
now observed on Earth. In the Qur’an, Allah distinguishes between these two
Arabic words in one verse that declares the time that Prophet Noah stayed with
his folk: ‘ And verily We sent Noah unto his folk, and he continued with them for
a thousand years (sana) save fifty years (‘am); and the flood engulfed them, for
they were wrong doers ’ (29: 14).
3.3 The week as the primary time cycle
While lbn ‘Arab! considers the Week (of Creation) to be the primary time cycle,
only the week among these four cycles does not seem to have any apparent
astronomical significance. We can say only that the week is one-quarter of the
divine lunar month (28 = 4x7). From the observed astronomical point of view,
the day should be the primary time cycle, because it is the smallest standard
period of time as far as the solar system and the Earth are concerned, and all
other three cycles (as defined by Ibn ‘Arabi) are integer multiples of the day,
while the year is not an integer multiple of the week. However, we shall see that
lbn ‘Arabi does not consider the day to be the primary cycle because the Days of
the divine Week are not similar to each other, as they might appear to us. Since
each Day of the Week is based on one of the seven fundamental divine Attributes
of Allah, so these Days are not identical because those seven divine Attributes
are not identical. Therefore the Week, rather than the day, is the primary cycle of
divine time, and each day of the seven Days of that Week is ruled by one of the
seven fundamental divine Attributes.
However, in keeping with lbn ‘Arabi’s essential understanding of the ‘ever-
new creation’, this does not mean that any particular day of this week is identical
to that of another week. They are only ‘similar’ to each other because they are
originated from the same divine Attribute. Ibn ‘Arabi says:
Nothing is actually repeated, because of divine vastness ( ittisa ); so (every-
thing) is in ever-new, not renewed, existence. Thus if we call the new (thing)
‘renewed’, that is because it is extremely similar (but not identical) to its
counterpart, so that they can not be distinguished from each other . . . and
The significance of the divine week 8 1
the daytime and night are called ‘the two-new’ ( al-jadidan ), and not ‘the
two-renewed’ ( al-mutajaddidan ), because Saturday is not Sunday and it is
not Saturday from the other week, or from another month or from another
year.
[III. 127.23]
This is clearly evident in modem astronomy, because whatever periodical
motions we see locally in our solar system are actually part of a more global
motion that, in the end, never repeats itself in the same way, because everything
is moving (see sections 1.1 and 1.4). In fact, Ibn ‘Arab! always stresses that there
can not be any two identical forms in the world, and that this is because ‘Allah
never manifests in the same form twice, nor in the same form to any two
persons’ [III. 127.33],
Therefore Ibn ‘Arab! maintains that ‘although there are many days, the real
order of events reduces them into seven days’ [Ayyam Al-Sha’n : 6], which are
the seven days of the week; and then these days iterate in months and years. And
as we showed, this is due to the fact that ‘(the main) divine Attributes are seven,
not more, which made the Age not more than seven (distinctive) Days’
[11.437.30],
However, the observed, earthly week and its days that we witness and live
through do not seem to be distinctive in any natural way; as noted earlier, they
appears to be purely conventional. The reason for that is the ‘intertwining’
between the underlying divine seven ‘Days’ of creation and the days that we
live. This intertwining of the two kinds of days is a complicated concept that Ibn
‘Arabi explained partially in his short book Ayyam Al-Sha’n, and in a few pas-
sages in the Futiihat. We shall devote Chapter 4 to explaining the real flow of
time as viewed by Ibn ‘Arabi, by defining three different types of days: the
normal days, and the ‘taken-out’ days and the ‘intertwined’ days.
3.4 The divine origin of the seven days of the week
Therefore, Ibn ‘Arabi concludes, each Day of the seven Days of the divine Week
has to be based on one of these seven basic divine Attributes:
So because Allah (Who is described by the seven fundamental Attributes)
created the world according to His own Image [11.395.25], . . . the Days
had to be seven due to these (seven) Attributes and their rides, so the world
appeared living, knowing, able, willing, hearing, seeing and speaking.
[11.438.19]
We have already shown in section 2.1 that ‘time’ for Ibn ‘Arabi is an imaginary
attribute that is used to compare the chronological order of moving things. The
day is actually a measure of the motion of the orb of the Sun, or more precisely
the Isotropic Orb. And since motion is created by Allah, by creating events in
the world, there are seven fundamental creative motions, or ‘Days of events’,
82 The significance of the divine week
each of which is originated from or ruled by one of these seven divine Attributes,
and further associated with specific astronomical or astrological positions and
figures apparently involved in the cosmological manifestations of those divine
influences (see also the detailed outline of these associated symbols in Table 3.1
below):
(the motion of) the Day of Sunday was from the (divine) Attribute of
Hearing,
. . . and the motion of the Day of Monday was from the Attribute of Living,
. . . and the motion of the Day of Tuesday was from the Attribute of Seeing,
. . . and the motion of the Day of Wednesday was from the Attribute of
Willing,
. . . and the motion of the Day of Thursday was from the Attribute of
Ability,
. . . and the motion of the Day of Friday was from the Attribute of Knowl-
edge,
. . . and the motion of the Day of Saturday was from the Attribute of Speak-
ing.
[II. 438. 7]
This relation between the seven Days and the seven main divine Attributes is not
arbitrary. We notice that Sunday, which is the first day of the week (and in the
creation, as we shall see in section 3.5), was from the Attribute of Hearing. This
is because Allah started the creation on this day, and the first thing that is needed
for the thing to be created is hearing, in order to hear Allah’s creative command
‘Be’ [11.401.28], Ibn ‘Arabi states that everything can hear before it actually
appears in the world, because everything has some sort of existence or determi-
nation in the foreknowledge of Allah before He actually creates it [11.400. 7, see
also section 2.3 above and section 3.6 below]. By hearing the command of Allah,
the manifest world or cosmos starts to gain real existence after it had been exist-
ing in the foreknowledge of Allah. Therefore the world appears in existence as
hearing, living, seeing, willing, able, knowing, and speaking; but it gains these
attributes one by one in a special sequence that starts by hearing and ends by
speaking - but not necessarily in the same order, owing to the ‘intertwining’ of
those divine influences that will be explained in the next chapter.
As Ibn ‘Arabi points out, we can also notice a similar sequence in the first
stages of the development of the foetus and child’s life: s/he acquires the first six
attributes before birth, while speaking is acquired afterwards (see also section
3.6 below for more comparisons between the macrocosm of the world and
microcosm of the true human being). This can be compared to the creation of the
world by Allah ‘ Who created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is between
them in six Days’ [from Sunday to Friday, per IV. 11.30], "then He mounted on
the Throne ’ [on Saturday, per IV. 11.31] (25:59), with Saturday being associated
with the divine Speaking. As Ibn ‘Arabi indicates in this regard [III. 108-109],
Allah also says: ‘The All-Merciful, (He) taught the Qur’an, (then He) created the
The significance of the divine week 83
Human Being, (then He) taught him speaking ouf (59: 1 — 4), which indicates
again that speaking came last. On the other hand, lbn ‘Arabi affirms that the
baby who is bom after six lunar months may live to be quite healthy, and those
six months are six lunar ‘days’.
So for lbn ‘Arabi, the creation of the world, like that of the foetus, is com-
pleted in six Days: these correspond to the six directions: (up, down, right, left,
front, back), and then on the Seventh Day (Saturday) it - both the world and the
human being - continues living, changing from one state to another. That is why
lbn ‘Arabi calls Saturday the ‘Day of eternity’ as we shall see further below (end
of section 3.5). So like the genesis of each human being, although we do not
clearly recognize it, the world - with all what it includes - ‘appeared living,
knowing, able, willing, hearing, seeing and speaking’ [11.438.19] in seven divine
Days.
Like the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, lbn ‘Arabi also assigns a spe-
cific divine Day to each planet of the seven moving planets in the seven heavens
[1.154-156], In addition to that, he also assigns to each of these planets - follow-
ing the detailed indications in certain hadith - the spiritual reality ( ruhaniyya ) of
one particular prophet (Chittick 2002: 201-230). Furthermore, each one of these
seven prophets always has a representative on Earth as one of the seven ‘Substi-
tutes’ ( abdal) of the spiritual hierarchy, each one located in one region ( iqlim ) of
the seven basic geographical regions of the Earth. 12 Ibn ‘Arabi always affirms
that whatever happens on the Earth is preordained in the heavens day by day and
hour by hour - through these spirits of the prophets and other angels who reside
in the heavens - and received by their agents ( nuwwab , s. na’ib) on the Earth,
though he also affirms that there are always other unpredictable actions or events
due to the direct relation between Allah and every entity in the world, which is
distinct from those relations mediated through the First Intellect or the Soul
[11.434. 8].
Thus he explains that
He ( the prophet Idris) 13 told his friends that there are seven (spiritu-
ally perfect) Men called (the ‘Substitutes’ ( al-abdal , s. badal) by whom
Allah keeps the seven geographical regions (aqalim); to each Substitute
(is assigned) a region. They are looked after by the spirits of the seven
Heavens, and each person of those (Substitutes) has power from the spirits
of prophets residing in these Heavens. They (i.e. the prophets in the seven
heavens) are Abraham ( al-Khalil , in the highest, seventh heaven of Saturn)
then (in descending order) Moses, then Aaron, then Idris, then Joseph, then
Jesus, then Adam, may Allah’s peace be upon them all. As for John (the
Baptist), he alternates between (the heavens of) Jesus and Aaron. So (the
divine knowledge) descends upon the hearts of those seven Substitutes from
the realities of those prophets - peace be upon them!; and they are looked
after by the seven planets by what Allah, the Exalted, entrusted (in those
planets) through their rolling in their orbs and by what Allah entrusted in the
motions of these seven heavens of secrets, knowings, and higher and lower
84 The significance of the divine week
effects. Allah said: ‘ and He inspired in each heaven its mandate ’ (41:12).
So they have in their hearts in each hour and in each day what the possessor
of this hour and the ruler of this day give away (to them).
[1.154.34]
Ibn ‘Arab! also shows elsewhere that the seven Days are ‘created’ by the corre-
sponding seven divine Names, and those are not the same as the fundamental
Names or Attributes that initiated their motion [II. 442. 5]. Each one of those
seven creating Names also created the corresponding heaven, the prophet who is
in it, as well as the planet within that orb, a specific letter from the Arabic alpha-
bet, and one specific constellation where ‘the specific planet of this orb is first
created by Allah and started moving in this constellation’ [11.445. 5]. The relation
between each heaven and the corresponding letter of the alphabet is that ‘this
heaven has some (special) effect in the existence of these letters’ [11.445. 3]. All
this is summarized in Table 3.1, which is arranged from the First Day (Sunday)
to the Seventh Day (Saturday).
The information brought together in this Table 3.1 provides essential keys to
Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmology, astrological symbolism, and understanding of the spir-
itual hierarchy. However here we are mainly concerned with the seven Days of
the Week. It is particularly important to notice the ‘irregular’ relationship
between the order of the days as we witness them (Sunday, Monday and so on)
and the corresponding order of the seven heavens and the seven related regions
on the Earth. The week starts with Sunday, from the middle (fourth, solar) orb,
which is the heart of all orbs [11.275.31], then Monday in the orb of the Moon
(the first, lowest heaven), then the fifth heaven, and so on. However, the corre-
sponding order of Earth regions (‘climes’) goes from the fourth, seventh, third,
and so on as in Table 3.1. Thus we can see that there is always a difference (sep-
aration) of three days between one heaven and the other that is directly above it.
As we shall see in the coming chapter, Ibn ‘Arabi therefore distinguishes
between the witnessed order of the days of the week and their actual flow in the
heavens, and he calls this separation Salkh or ‘taking-out’ [Ayyam Al-Sha’n: 7],
a rare expression taken from the Qur’an (36:37). In interpreting that Qur’anic
verse, Ibn ‘Arabi explains that there are three nights’ and three daytimes’ differ-
ence between the actual daytime and its own night that it was taken out of. This
process of taking the daytimes out of the nights and vice versa is, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s
view, the ultimate reason underlying the creation itself: for without it the world
would not appear in existence in six dimensions [Ayyam Al-Sha’n : 8-9]. This
will be explained further in the following chapter with diagrams and illustra-
tions.
3.5 The significance of each day of the divine week
Because of the importance of the Days of the Week of divine creation in Ibn
‘Arabi’s cosmology, he writes about them at length in the Futuhdt and other
books. In his mysterious book Al-Tanazzulat AI-Mawsiliyya ( The Spiritual
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86 The significance of the divine week
Inspirations at Mosul, Concerning the Secrets of Prayers and the Original
Days), he devoted the last ten chapters to these divine Days and their relations
with the heavenly orbs and the seven planets. However, it is not easy at all to
extract a lot of information from this book because he intentionally used a very
difficult language full of signs and secrets. However, some of his sayings there
provide very useful information when we compare them to his statements in
other books. For example, right in the full title of that book, we are led to under-
stand that there are ‘original’ Days, as opposed to the normal witnessed days on
Earth. We shall discuss in more detail the different types of days that Ibn ‘Arabi
introduces and talks about there in the following Chapter 4, but what we shall
now outline in the remainder of this chapter relates mostly to the ‘original’ Days
of divine creation, which are ‘the Days of (divine) Events’, and not our normal
witnessed days of the week.
To begin with, because each Day of the divine Week is ruled by a specific
divine Name, it has to have a special significance related to this Name. This dis-
tinctive significance is not so apparent in the normal, ‘circulated’ days as it is for
the original Days of Events as they were created by Allah. We shall first outline
here the divine significance of each Day of the Week in the process of creating
the macrocosm of the heavens and the Earth - and also the microcosm of the
theomorphic human being {ins an).
In addition to those general verses in Qur'an in which Allah states that He
‘ created the Heavens and Earth in six days and theri He mounted on the Throne ’
(7:54, 10:3, 11:7, 25:59, 32:4, 50:38, 57:4) there are some details about what He
created each Day in the verses at the beginning of the Sura Fussilat (41:9-12).
These verses were explained further in one hadith where the Prophet Muham-
mad said:
Allah, the cherished and the glorified, created the first Day (event) in
Sunday; and the earth was created on Sunday and Monday; and on Tuesday
and Wednesday the mountains were created, the rivers were cleft, fruits
were planted and in each earth its food was determined, then turned He to
the heaven when it was smoke, and said unto it and unto the Earth: Come
both of you, willingly or unwillingly. They said: We come, obedient .] So He
completed them seven heavens in two Days and inspired in each heaven its
mandate (41:11-12), on Thursday and Friday; and the last of creation was
in the last hours of Friday, and when it was Saturday there was no creation
in it.
[Kanz: 15120]
So here we will briefly outline what Ibn ‘Arabi has to say about the significance
- in the creation of both the world and the human being - of each Day of the
original Days of the divine Week of creation:
The significance of the divine week 87
3. 5. 1 ‘The first day ’ of creation (al-altad, Sunday)
The Arabic name for Sunday, al-ahad, is also a Qur’anic name of Allah (112:1,
etc.) which means ‘the One’, ‘the Unique’, the indivisible Unit. It is the first Day
in which Allah started the Creation, so it is the first Day in the world [IV. 11.31].
As we explained in section 2.3, the entities of the world were already eternally
determined in Allah’s foreknowledge, and by this state of pre-existence they
gained the first fundamental divine attribute of ‘hearing’. So the motion of
‘Sunday was created from the Attribute of Hearing; that is why everything in the
world hears the divine Command (Be! Kuri) (even) in its state of non-existence’
[11.438. 8]. Allah said in the Qur’an: ‘ But His Command, when He intendeth a
thing, is only that He saith unto it: Be, and (then) it is ’ (36:82). Therefore Allah
creates by saying the command ‘Be’ unto the things even before their actual
existence. Ibn ‘Arabi, however, carefully distinguishes between the divine
‘Saying’ ( qawl ) and ‘Speaking’ ( kaldm ): ‘By “Saying” the non-existent hears.
(This is) like His saying “ and our Command when We intend a thing is to say
unto it ‘Be’” (16:40). And by “Speaking” the existent hears, as in His saying
“and Allah spoke to Moses, speaking” (4:164)’ [11.400.7].
As we have already explained in earlier chapters, ibn ‘Arabi affirms that the
motion of the Isotropic Orb determines only one Day, which is one cycle starting
from when the first degree of Gemini is matching the Foot in the Pedestal (see
section 2.4). So because the divine Pedestal is above the Isotropic Orb, which
has no distinguishing signs, the length of the day cannot be known [11.437.34].
Although we on Earth normally measure the day by hours and minutes or by the
time of the Earth’s motion around itself, this is a mere convention - while the
actual length of the day/Day is known only to Allah [1.122.28].
Ibn ‘Arabi elsewhere explains that the Sun and its heavenly orb were created
on Sunday [1.155.6, 1.466.6, 11.445.15]. This is because the Sun resembles the
spirit [1.55.8, 1.275.26], and the absolute Spirit (i.e. ‘the real through whom crea-
tion takes place’: SDK: 132-134) is the first appearance of the divine Real (in
the Creation), so with the initial creative motion of this First Day, the ‘point’
(nukta) or zero-dimension (0-D, as we shall discuss the dimensions in detail in
section 7.10) was defined. The Sun is in the central, fourth heaven from the
Earth, and this heaven was created by the self-disclosure (SDK: 91, 103, also
SDG: 47-57) of the divine Name ‘the Light’ (al-Nur). Hence:
(the Sun) is the heart of the world and the heart of the (seven) heavens.
Allah created it on Sunday, and He made it a place for the Pole of human
spirits, Idris, peace be upon him. And Allah called this heaven ‘a high place ’
(19:57) because it is a heart, although the heaven that is above it is higher
(in physical place). But Allah meant the highness of status (makana), so the
place (makan) (of the fourth, central heaven) is high because of its status,
and Allah created it in al-simak (which is the central, fourteenth station of
the 28 stations or ‘mansions’ of the Moon), and created its planet (the Sun)
and its orb, and created the letter nun (u) out of it.
[11.445.15]
88 The significance of the divine week
Ibn ‘Arabi then explains the relation and correspondence between the fourth
heaven (celestial sphere) of this Day and the particular geographical clime on the
Earth that was appointed to the corresponding figure from among the seven Sub-
stitutes ( abddl ), and what are the particular ‘affairs’ that happen on - i.e. through
the higher influences associated with - this Day:
Every affair of knowledge in the First Day is from the matter of Idris, peace
be upon him! And every higher (celestial) effect on that Day in the elements
of air and fire is from the orbiting of the Sun and its supervision which is
entrusted to it by Allah, the Exalted. As for what comes from the effect on
the elements of water and earth on that Day, (it) is from the motion of the
fourth orb (containing the Sun). The (earthly) place of the (spiritual) person
( badal) who upholds that influence among the climes is the fourth clime.
So what is acquired, among the (divinely inspired) knowings, by this par-
ticular person among the abddl (residing) in this region is the knowing of
the secrets of the spiritual entities ( ruhaniyyat : i.e. directing the heavenly
spheres), the knowing of light and radiance, the knowing of the lightning
and the rays (of light), and the knowing of every luminous material body
- why it becomes illuminated, what is the (distinctive) constitution that gave
it this receptivity (to luminosity).
[1.155.6]
Also in chapter 46 of Al-Tanazzulat Al-Mawsiliyya, Ibn ‘Arabi mentioned many
mysterious details about this Day and his visit to the Pole of all spirits, the
prophet Idris, in the orb of the Sun. This chapter (46) of the Tanazzulat -
together with its following few chapters, and taken in conjunction with related
passages from chapters 15 and 198 of the Futuhat - deserves a separate special-
ized study which is beyond the scope of this book. I have just mentioned some
related passages for the ‘First Day’ above as an illustration of those mysterious
allusions in the Tanazzulat, but in the shorter summaries from the Futuhat below
will have to pass over Ibn ‘Arabi’s corresponding remarks for the other Days.
3.5.2 ‘The second day’ of creation (al-ithnayn, Monday)
Ibn ‘Arabi says that ‘the motion of Monday was created from the (divine)
Attribute of “ The Living One ” ( al-Hayy ), and through it life was in the world, so
everything in the world is living (i.e. starts to become living, on Monday)’
[II. 438. 9]. Then he explains that the Moon, which corresponds to the ‘Second
Day’ of Creation, is in the first celestial sphere above the Earth:
And the divine Name ‘ The Clarifying One ’ ( al-Mubin ) was intent on bring-
ing into existence this lowest heaven and its planet (the Moon) on the
Second Day, in the (lunar mansion) of Iklil (‘the Crown’, which is the sev-
enteenth station of the 28 lunar stations), and the letter dal (^) is from the
motion of this orb.
[11.445.30]
The significance of the divine week 89
The Moon is the fastest moving planet in the heavens, moving through one lunar
mansion every day, so it goes through all 28 lunar mansions in its day, which equals
28 Earth days (according to Ibn ‘Arabi, as explained in section 3.2). Ibn ‘Arabi
explains that from this motion the 28 letters of the alphabet are created, regardless
of how they are written or spoken in different languages [II.448.4] (i.e. the sounds).
Allah made this first (lowest) heaven the place for the first prophet Adam, since he
is the (first manifestation or exemplar of) the Perfect Human Being.
The Moon - in keeping with its association with Adam (the emblematic
human being) - resembles the soul [1.499.5], and it is the second state of the
appearance of the Single Monad, after the creation of the spirits (angels), which
are purely spiritual creatures. That is why Adam himself lectured Ibn ‘Arab!
about the directions when he visited him in the orb of the Moon ( Al-Tanazzulat
Al-Mawsiliyya : 261) - because through the creation of his Day (Monday) the
space and the six directions started to form.
3.5.3 ‘The third day’ of creation (al-thulatha’, Tuesday)
And for the motion of Tuesday Ibn ‘Arabi says that it was created from the
divine Attribute ‘Seeing’ ( basar ): so there is no part of the world but that it is
witnessing its Creator - i.e. in relation to its own individual essence, not the
Essence of its Creator [11.438.10], because the Essence of Allah, the Creator,
may not be seen, He may be seen only through the manifestation of His
Attributes (Names) throughout the Creation as we shall discuss in more detail in
section 5.5. Ibn ‘Arabi then adds that
The divine Name ‘the All-Prevailing’ ( al-Qahir ) was intent on bringing into
being the third heaven (the fifth from Earth); so He caused its (distinctive
spiritual) reality to appear, along with its planet (Mars, al-marrikh) and its
sphere, and He made it the dwelling for Aaron. . . . The existence of this
planet and the motion of its sphere were in the lunar mansion ‘Awwa (which
is the thirteenth station of the 28 Moon stations) on Tuesday. . . . And from
the motion of this sphere appeared the letter ‘ lam ’ (J).
[11.445. 8]
3.5.4 ‘The fourth day’ of creation (al-arba‘a\ Wednesday)
For Wednesday he says that ‘the motion of the Fourth Day came into existence
from the (divine) Attribute of Willing ( al-irada ), so there is no part of the world
but that it is seeking to glorify the One Who gives it existence [11.438. 1 1],
Mercury is in the sixth sphere from the Earth, and this heaven was created
through the (self-disclosure of the) divine Name ‘the Enumerator’ ( al-Muhsi ).
Allah created this heaven, its planet (Mercury), the Fourth Day (Wednesday),
and letter Id ’ (-1=) in the lunar mansion of the constellation Zabana (which is the
sixteenth station of the 28 Moon stations), and He caused Jesus to dwell there
[paraphrasing 11.445.26],
90 The significance of the divine week
3.5.5 ‘The fifth day’ of creation (al-khamis, Thursday)
And the motion of the Fifth Day (Thursday) came into existence from the
(divine) Attribute of Ability (or ‘Power’, al-qudra), so there is no part of exist-
ence but that it has been enabled to praise the One Who gives it existence
[11.438.16],
Jupiter ( al-mushtari) is in the sixth heaven from the Earth, and it and its
sphere were brought into existence through the self-disclosure of divine Name
‘the All-Knowing’ ( al - ‘Alim). Allah created this heaven, its planet, the Fifth Day
and the letter dad (lP 3 ) in the lunar mansion of the constellation Sir/a (which is
the twelfth station of the 28 Moon stations), and Fie made it a dwelling place for
the prophet Moses [paraphrasing 11.444.25].
3.5.6 The sixth ‘day of gathering’ (al-jum‘a, Friday) and its special
hour
Friday holds a special importance for Muslims and especially for lbn ‘Arabi,
who says that in this Day our Tablet (i.e. the souls) received its secrets from its
Lord, through the pens (i.e. the intellects). Ibn ‘Arab! then says that ‘the motion
of the Day of Gathering (Friday) came into being through the (divine) Attribute
of Knowledge: so there is no part of the world but that it knows the One Who
gives it existence, with regard to its own essence, not the Essence of the One
Who gives it existence’ [11.438.13].
Venus is in the second sphere of the heavens from the Earth and this heaven
was brought into existence by the self-disclosure of the divine Name ‘the
Shaper’ ( al-Musawwir , the One Who gives form). Allah created this heaven, its
planet (Venus), the Day of Gathering (Friday), and the letter ra’ (j) in the lunar
mansion of the constellation Gafr (which is the fifteenth station of the 28 stations
of the Moon), and He made it a dwelling place for the prophet Joseph
[11.445.23],
Before the advent of Islam, the Arabs called Friday ‘Uriiba (‘the day of
beauty and adornment’) [1.645.25], because it was a distinguished day in which
people meet. But in Islam Friday is called al-jum'a (‘the Day of Gathering’)
because that is the day people gather in prayer in one mosque, lbn ‘Arabi,
however, gives another explanation of the deeper ontological meaning for Jum'a.
On this Day Allah created the Human Being (Adam) in His Image, so on this
Day Allah ‘gathered together’ (Arabic verb jama'a) the form of the Truly Real
(al-Haqq) and the form of all creation in the theomorphic human being {ins an),
so that is why this Day is called Jum'a [1.643.27]. And this special divine ‘gath-
ering’ of the theomorphic human being has occurred on a specific hour of this
Day, which made this whole Day holy, noble and the best of all Days.
lbn ‘Arabi affirms that Allah created humanity (Adam) on Friday [1.466.15],
following a well-known hadith in which the Prophet Muhammad said: ‘The best
Day the Sun rises on is Friday: Adam was created in it, he entered into Paradise
in it, he was taken out of Paradise in it, and the Hour (of the Resurrection) will
only come on Friday’ [ Kanz : 21050].
The significance of the divine week 91
Ibn ‘Arab! goes on to explain, on the basis of another hadith [Kanz: 21063],
that some people argued about the best day of the week to celebrate or com-
memorate God in, and that the people of the three major religions each followed
a different way, especially since Allah did not specify which day is best, but left
it for them to discover:
So the Christians said the best of days - and Allah knows best - is the First
Day (Sunday), because it is the day of the Sun and it is the First Day in
which Allah created the heavens and the Earth and what is between them.
He started the Creation in it due to its pride over the rest of the days. So
they took it as a festival. . . . And the Jews said: ‘But it is Saturday, because
Allah completed the Creation on Friday and He rested on Saturday.’ ....
Then for this community (of Islam) Gabriel came to Muhammad, may
Allah have peace and mercy on him, with the Day of Jwria in the form of a
polished mirror in which there is a spot ( nukta ), and he said unto him: ‘this
is the Day of Juina and this spot is an hour in which no Muslim servant
happens to be praying (when it comes to pass), but Allah shall forgive him’
\Kanz : 21063]. So the Prophet Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and mercy
be upon him, said: ‘So Allah guided us to what the people of the Book disa-
gree about, which is the divine explanation with the mirror’ - and he
assigned the guidance to Allah. And the reason behind its superiority is that
it is the Day in which Allah created this human kind, for whom He created
the creatures from Sunday to Thursday, so it has to be the best of times. And
the creation (of human kind) was in this Hour which appeared as a spot in
the mirror. . . . And this Hour in the Day of Jum'a is like the night of destiny
[laylat al-qadr, which according to Qur’an, is better than a thousand months
(97:3)] in the year.
[1.466.6]
So, he concludes, that is why Allah chose this Day over the other Days:
As He, the Exalted, did with all the existents, He has chosen as the best one
thing from each kind. He has chosen as the best from the Beautiful Names
the Name 'Allah’; He has chosen as the best from the people the prophets;
He has chosen as the best from His servants the angels; He has chosen as
the best from the heavenly spheres the (divine) Throne; He has chosen as
the best from the elements water; He has chosen as the best from the months
Ramadan; He has chosen as the best from worshipping fasting; He has
chosen as the best from the centuries the century of the Prophet Muhammad,
may Allah have peace and mercy upon him; He has chosen as best from the
Days the Day of Gathering ( al-jum‘a ); He has chosen as best from the nights
the Night of Destiny; He has chosen as best from (good) deeds the prescribed
deeds ( al-fara ’id); He has chosen as best from the numbers the number 99
(in the hadith on the 99 ‘Most Beautiful Names’ as mentioned above).
[II. 169.5]
92 The significance of the divine week
Then Ibn ‘Arab! goes on to explain why Allah has chosen as best these particular
things in each kind. With regard to the Day of Gathering, he says:
As for (the reason) for His choosing Friday as best from the Days (of the
divine creative Week), that is because in it the Two Forms appeared [i.e.
of the cosmos and of the theomorphic human being, in their final perfected
state], Allah made that Day (of the Gathering) for the form . . and it is
(uniquely) a feminine Day, for which is the beautiful adornment and the
completion of the creation (through Adam).
And [alluding to the hadith just cited above] Allah has chosen an Hour of
its hours that is like a spot in the mirror. That is the place (of manifestation
for) the form of the one [i.e. Adam, as the emblematic fully human being
and divine vice-gerent] who is disclosed in the mirror of this Day. Thus He/
he sees in it/him H/himself. 14 And through that Fonn [of all human being]
that appears between the mirror (of creation) and the One Who looks in it,
there takes place the (divine) Addressing (of each human soul) and the
imposition of responsibility ( taklif. on each human being).
[11.173.15]
So this Hour is the most precious hour, because in it the divine Form of the Real
{al-Haqq) and the form of the theomorphic human being meet together
( yajtami'dn from the same Arabic root as al-jum‘a), and by this ‘gathering’ the
Real is manifested - and at last perceived - in the Creation in the most perfect
form, which is the fonn of the perfect human being. In another passage, Ibn
‘Arab! explains this further:
And there is no Day among the Days (of Creation) more perfect than the
Day of Jum‘a, because in it there is made manifest the Wisdom of (God’s)
Capability, through His creating on that Day the human being whom Allah
created on His Image. So there remained no (more) perfection for the divine
Capability to create, since nothing is more perfect than the Image of the
Real ( siirat al-Haqq). . . .
Now since God specially distinguished (this Day) by that ‘Hour’ which
does not belong to any other Day - and time ( zaman ) is nothing but those
Days - therefore this Hour does not pertain to any other times but to the
Day of Jum'a. It is one part of the 24 parts of the Day, and it is in the half of
the Day which is called daytime ( nahar ). So it is in the manifest dimension
( zahir ) of that Day, and in the inner dimension ( batin ) of human being,
because the outer dimension of human being corresponds to the inner
dimension (night-time) of the Day, while the inner dimension of human
being corresponds to the outer dimension (daytime) of the Day.
[1.645.26]
Ibn ‘Arabi also comments on the imperative question of whether this Hour is
fixed, or is floating all over the Day, so that each Week it comes at a different
The significance of the divine week 93
time, since the original hadith above [ Kanz : 21063] did not give any explicit
indication of its exact location ‘in’ the Day of Gathering. Ibn ‘Arabi, in any case,
does not rule either possibility. He suggests that, if we have to take the strict sen-
sational meaning of the analogy between the Day and the mirror and the forms
that appear in them, then that specially chosen Hour would be fixed. But, if we
want to take it as an abstract meaning in the imagination, without moving it into
the world of senses - which is quite plausible in this context - then we could say
that it may be floating all over the Day of Gathering. So he affirms that both pos-
sibilities are plausible and that the issue may not be resolved without a further
divine specification [1.466.17]. However, because it denotes the creation of the
Human Being as the Image of the Real, this Hour must be fixed (on the Day of
Gathering) among the original (divine) Days that are the ‘Days of events’,
although it might be floating in the normal ‘circulated days’ that we actually
experience, because they are ‘intertwined’ with the ‘Days of events’.
3.5. 7 The seventh ‘day of rest’ (al-sabt, Saturday) as the ‘day of
eternity ’
As for the last day, Ibn ‘Arabi says that ‘the motion of Saturday was created from
the (divine) Attribute of Speaking ( kaldm ), so everything in the existence glorifies
in thanks of its Creator, but we do not understand their glorification’ [11.438.16].
Obviously Ibn ‘Arabi is referring here to the verse ‘the seven heavens and the
Earth, and all beings therein, declare His glory: there is not a thing but cele-
brates His praise; and yet ye understand not how they declare His glory! Verily
He is Oft-Forbearing, Most Forgiving!' (17:44). We shall also see in section 7.8
that the world essentially is the ‘words’ (i.e. the vibrations) generated by its enti-
ties on the smallest scale. This is true for whatever we hear, see, smell, taste and
everything physical - all are the ‘words’ spoken by the entities of the world. This
seems to cope very well in accordance with the recent theory of Superstrings.
Elsewhere Ibn ‘Arabi says:
Saturn ( Kaywan ) is in the seventh sphere from the Earth, and this heaven
was created by the (self-disclosure of the) divine Name ‘the Lord’ ( al -
Rabb). Allah created this heaven, its planet and the ‘Day of Rest’ ( al-sabt ,
Saturday) in the lunar mansion of the constellation Khirtan (also called al-
Zabra, and it is the eleventh mansion of the 28 Moon mansions), and He
made it a dwelling place for the prophet Abraham.
[paraphrasing 11.442.21]
Saturday bears a very important and unique meaning for Ibn ‘Arabi, since he
considers it to be the Day of eternity. This concept is initially mysterious, but
extremely important, since Ibn ‘Arabi mentions it many times in the Futuhat and
other books and considers it as an undisputable fact.
In his Al-Tanazzulat Al-Mawsiliyya, he asserts that: ‘Saturday passes through
the existent things like number does in the countable things, permanence in the
94 The significance of the divine week
permanent things, and standing in the standing things; it is not non-existing nor
existing, and not present nor absent’ {Al-Tanazzulat Al-Mawsiliyya: 339).
This description is also like the strange properties of the ‘Universal Reality’
{haqiqat al-haqd’iq, ‘the Reality of Realities’) that he introduces to connect the
divine properties of the Real with the properties of the Creation. By way of clari-
fication, he then goes on to explain that
The whole world (as kinds and species, including metals, elements, plants,
animals, angels, jinn and humans) from its beginning to its end was formed
in six Days, from the beginning of (the night) of the First Day until the
end of the Day of Gathering (Friday), and there only remains Saturday for
changing from one state to another and from one rank to another, and for
transmutation from one being to another, constantly. . . . That is why the
‘rulers’ (in terms of higher astrological or cosmological influences) on this
Day are cold and dryness (so that they will be able to hold the picture in
imagination in order to feel the continuous presence, as will be discussed
in section 5.6), and among the planets: Saturn. So this Day alone was a cir-
cumferential orb whoever moves in it will know the Identity, the Attributes,
the Actions and the Effects.
[1.61.13]
This alludes to the three types of divine Names: the Names of Essence ( asma’
al-dhat), the Names of Descriptions or the Attributes {asma’ al-sifdt) and the
Names of Actions {asma’ al-af‘al) [1.423.20, 1.67.28; K. al-Masa’il : 97] and the
‘Effects’ here are the entire Creation. So Ibn ‘Arabi says that the one who moves
with the orb of Saturday will know the Real and the Creation. This is in fact the
description of the spiritual ‘Pole’ - like Ibn ‘Arabi himself - who is therefore
‘out of time’ (see also section 2.7), because he already knows that he witnesses
the real Day of Saturday.
Ibn ‘Arabi even explicitly calls Saturday the ‘Day of Eternity’ (yawm al-
abad: al-abad being eternity considered as extending eternally ‘into the future’,
as opposed to al-azal or ‘beginningless eternity’) quite often in his writing. For
example, in the Futuhat he says:
And so the Day of Eternity starts which is Saturday {al-sabt), and al-sabt
means ‘rest’; it is the seventh Day, and it has no end. No sense of weari-
ness touched the Creator in creating what Fie did. So Saturday was the Day
of being finished with the creation of the levels of the world, but there still
remains for Allah the creation of what this world requires of the states (for
every individual creature), which are eternally endless and without limit.
[III. 192.20]
He also named chapter 53 of Al-Tanazzulat Al-Mawsiliyya ‘On the Inner (Spirit-
ual) Knowing that Saturday is the Day of Eternity, and it is the Day of Transmu-
tations’. Saturday, therefore is the ‘Day of Rest’ (as its name in Arabic, al-sabt.
The significance of the divine week 95
also indicates), because Allah has finished the creation (of all the cosmos and
human being) on Friday, so that there remained nothing new to be created -
except for the endlessly changing states of all the creatures in time.
Thus Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that
Allah created the world in six Days; He started on Sunday and finished by
Friday, and no sense of any exhaustion touched Him; nor did He get weary
from creating the creatures. So when it was the seventh Day of the week and
He had finished creating the world, He looked like someone who is taking a
rest from weariness. So He reclined and put one leg over the other and said:
‘I am the King’, as narrated in the prophetic sayings, so this Day is called
al-sabt, which means ‘the Day of Rest’. It is the Day of Eternity, because in
this Day the individuals of every species are formed in the world and in the
hereafter.
There are only seven Days, and each Day has a ruler ( wali ) designated by
Allah. So when the matter/Command ended up on Saturday, Allah assigned
it to a ruler with the ability to stabilize and fix, so he can stabilize the forms
(of all the creatures) in the ‘Dust’ ( al-haba of the barzakh or divine
Imagination). So the daytime ( nahar ) of this Day - i.e. the Day of Eternity -
is for the people of the Gardens, and its night-time is for the people of the
Fire: so there is no evening (end) for its daytime, and its night-time has no
morning.
[IV. 11.30]
Then Ibn ‘Arabi mentions the story of his encounter with the (spirit of) al-Sabti
(lit.: ‘the Saturday man’) who is Muhammad, son of the famous Abbasid caliph
Harun al-Rashid, whom he met in Mecca one Friday while circumambulating
the Kaaba, and asked him: ‘I knew that you were called al-Sabti because you
worked every Saturday for what you ate during the rest of the week ... so why
did you choose Saturday from the rest of the days of the week?’ Al-Sabti replied:
This is a very good question. I knew that Allah started creating the world on
Sunday and finished on Friday, and on Saturday He reclined and put one leg
over the other and said: ‘I am the King’; that is what I heard in narrations
when I was in this world. So I swore to work like that.
[IV. 11.35, see also Al-Tanazznlat Al-Mawsiliyya: 340]
So he worked on Saturday and rested (to devote himself to worship Allah) in the
other six days. So Allah’s work of the creation was done in the six Days from
Sunday to Friday, and the ‘Day of Eternity’ is for us to work and develop
through the path leading to our ultimate destination.
On the other hand, the fact that the seventh Day was created through the
divine Attribute of Speaking reminds us that the very First Day was created
through the divine Attribute of Hearing. Ibn ‘Arabi typically points out that this
all together is like a circle: since the world is created through divine Speaking
96 The significance of the divine week
(the Command ‘Be’), so the creatures first needed hearing in order to hear that
existentiating Command. Because human beings are - at least potentially -
uniquely created in the fully theomorphic Image of Allah, He granted them
something of the Attribute by which He creates things, so they in turn can create
through ‘speaking’: these are, for example, the meanings one creates in the soul
of the hearer when one speaks. And because creation is in the end a divine act,
the Prophet Muhammad says that ‘Allah is by the tongue of every speaker’
\Kanz: 7842; see also IV. 187. 19, IV. 292. 32]. So this brings us back to the initial
receptive state of ‘Hearing’, because everything in the world is at the end per-
ceived through vibrations, even the visible and other things. Therefore, the crea-
tion takes place always, at every moment in time and in every point of space. In
terms of the same divine creative cycle of the seven Days explained above, the
world is re-created every moment in six Days (from Sunday to Friday) and dis-
played on the seventh Day (Saturday). Indeed in terms of Ibn ‘Arabi’s famous
theory of the oneness of being, the speaker is in fact Allah, and the hearer is also
nothing other than Allah [11.367.16], Ibn ‘Arabi frequently expresses this para-
doxical reality in language referring to the forms of the ritual prayer, as when he
says: ‘Thus Allah says by the tongue of his servant (as he says during the prayer)
‘Allah hears who praised Him’; and then the servant says ‘Our Lord, to Thee is
the Praise!’, not to me’ [11.367.14]. Also he concludes: ‘You praise Yourself (on
the tongue of every speaker), and You hear Your words. Because the Praise is
only for Allah and by Allah [1. 1 12.32, alluding to Qur’an 1:1].
One final aspect of Saturday is that Ibn ‘Arabi also describes it as ‘the fruitless
Day’ ( al-yawm al-‘aqinr, 22:55), which is a result of its being the Day of Eternity:
Now the fruitless is that from which nothing is born, so it does not have a
birth of its kind. So (Saturday) is called ‘fruitless’ because at the end there
is no Day after it, and this refers to Saturday from the (divine creative)
Week, which is the Day of eternity. Its daytime is all light for the people
of the Gardens eternally, and its night-time is all darkness for the people of
Gehenna, also eternally.
[III. 564. 22]
3.6 Space-time and creation in six days
So this means that we - along with all of manifest creation, at all times - are
now living in this ‘Seventh Day’, but the riddle is how we can at the same time
still be viewing the other Days of the week, including Saturday itself. Ibn ‘Arabi
himself remarks that ‘it is rather amazing that the Days, among which is Satur-
day, are (all) happening in Saturday; because it is one of these Days and they are
appearing in it’ [II. 444. 7]. But he says that this is ultimately plausible, and he
gives the striking example from the famous divine saying describing Adam when
Allah showed him his progeny, including himself, in His Hand - while at the
same time he was outside looking on at that [11.444. 14; Kanz\ 15123].
The fact that Saturday is the ‘Day of eternity’ suggests that the time that we
The significance of the divine week 97
live is only Saturday, so that the other six Days (of events) of the (original)
Week could account for space, and not time; this is also supported by the obser-
vation that the usual word for ‘day’ in Arabic (yawm ) also bears the meaning of
‘direction’. 15 If we add this to what we have just said above about the oneness of
being, and that the act of creation ‘in one Week’ actually takes place at every
moment of time, then we can easily come to a very important conclusion that the
actual Week and its seven distinctive Days make up a unit of space-time, and not
time alone. In the first six Days, space is created with its six directions (three
dimensions) and then it is displayed (‘in time’) on Saturday. We do not feel the
creation in the six Days because we are being created but not yet, and we only
feel ourselves created on Saturday, which is why it is the Day of eternity. As
Allah said in the Qur’an: ‘7 called them not to witness the creation of Heavens
and the Earth ’ (18:51), which He created in six Days, from Sunday to Friday.
But when this initial stage of creation is over and Allah the All-Merciful
‘ mounted on the Throne’ , changing the creation from one state into another, then
and only then, on Saturday, do we realize ourselves and also realize the world
(of space) that was created in those preceding six Days.
Ibn ‘Arabi declares in many passages that the world is constantly being re-
created on every single ‘Day of event’ (see section 5.6). And the Days of events
are seven, based on the central divine Attributes of Allah. So the creation of the
world by Allah is a seven-step process: in each Day of those seven Days of
events the world gains the qualities and manifestations of the corresponding
divine Attribute. Thus on the First Day, the world (which had already been deter-
mined eternally in the foreknowledge of Allah) hears Allah’s command: ‘Be’, so
it moves from the ‘absolute Unseen’ into the first step of existence which has no
dimension yet (0-D), like the geometrical point ( nuqta); it is the first real Image
of the Real ( al-Haqq ), Allah, the Exalted, and thus it is called ‘ the real through
whom creation takes place ’ (SDK: 132), and this is the ‘Greatest Element’ (see
sections V6.2 and 6.5). So ‘the Real’ is a name of Allah and this Greatest
Element. Then, on the Second Day, the world becomes living, and by that the
creation of angels from the divine Light takes place (1-D), as will be discussed
in more detail in section 7.10. Then on the Third Day it can witness its Creator
(with respect to its being His creation), while on the Fourth Day it becomes
willing to magnify 16 its Creator (and by that the creation of the jinn takes place),
and on the Fifth Day it is able to do so. Finally, on Friday - or by the ‘last three
hours’ of Friday, when the Human Being is created 17 - the world will actually
know its Creator (again with respect to His act of creation, not in Himself): and
this happens only by creating the Human Being (Adam), who is in respect to the
world the Spirit is for the true Human Being [1. 1 18.8, III. 363. 3].
By these six Days the world is completely created as a Single Monad who is
also the ‘Complete Human Being’, including heavens and Earth, mind and soul,
spirit and body. Then on the seventh Day this picture of the complete world will
be held in the imagination of the human being, because it is an imaginal form
that will intrinsically cease to exist right in the second moment (‘Day’) after its
creation, to be instantly re-created in a new form. That is why, Ibn ‘Arabi
98 The significance of the divine week
explains, Allah appointed as the ‘rulers’ on Saturday the essential qualities of
coldness and dryness, so that this cosmic image may appear to be continuous
[1.61.15]. So our imagination holds a new picture of the world, every ‘Day’
(moment), and by comparing between those succeeding pictures, the imagination
perceives the motion or change in space and time, since Allah never manifests in
the same form twice or to two perceivers [1.679.7, 11.77.27, II. 616. 3]. This is
also the meaning of the verse: ‘each Day He is in a (different) task' (55:29),
which Ibn ‘Arab! uses more frequently than any others from the Qur’an to cor-
roborate this particular ontological view.
It has to be noticed however, that, in every Week of Creation, only one ‘point’
of space-time is created, and that is the point where the observer is - or rather, the
observer himself is also created at that point in space-time. The observer perceives
other points of space and time because they have been held somehow within the
‘Dust’ ( haba ’) of the divine cosmic Imagination ( barzakh , khaydl, etc.).
Therefore, Ibn ‘Arab! explains the verse in Qur’an: ‘Your Lord is Allah Who
created the heavens and the Earth in six Days, then He mounted on the Throne;
He draweth the night as a veil over the Day, (7:54, see also other similar verses
in Qur’an: 10:3, 11:7, 25:59, 32:4, 50:38 and 57:4) as indicating that the creation
has been completed in six Days, from Sunday to Friday, by creating Adam (the
cosmic Human Being) on Friday; and then ‘He established Himself on the
Throne ’ on Saturday when nothing new is to be created, but only changing the
states of the creatures - until the Day of Judgement, and after that either in
the Gardens or in Gehenna - so this is the Day of eternity. Yet the heavens and
the Earth are constantly being re-created every moment: therefore the same
Week and Days of creation, including Saturday, are continually reiterating
throughout Saturday, at every moment.
So if we think of the whole of manifest creation (the cosmos or ‘world’)
throughout all places and times, throughout ‘the Age’ ( al-Dahr ), it is only seven
Days: six Days for the creation, and the seventh Day (Saturday) for the realiza-
tion. But if we think of ourselves as points in this space-time of the Age, because
of the eternally renewed re-creation we observe succeeding Days and Weeks (as
moments); yet all those Days (including Saturday) are happening in the Saturday
of the single, unique Week of ‘the Age’.
Ibn ‘Arabi draws interesting symbolic parallels and extrapolations from this
concept of creation just explained. Just like this momentary creation in the
Week, our own human age (life) is also seven days (or periods): six in this world
and Saturday for the hereafter, which we have either as all-day in Paradise or as
all-night in Gehenna. Similarly also, the age of human civilization on Earth is
seven days and we are now living in Friday, indeed in the last few hours of it.
This is because, as Ibn ‘Arabi observes:
We (the true followers of the Prophet) are, thanks to Allah, the Day of Jum'a,
and Muhammad - may Allah have peace and mercy upon him - is this very
‘ Hour ’ itself, by which the Day of Jum'a takes precedence over all other Days.
[1.646.15]
The significance of the divine week 99
This is because Muhammad is the Perfect Human Being who is the most perfect
Image of the Real. Ibn ‘Arabi explains this well-known central conception in his
thought in more detail in chapter 346 of the Futiihat, where he observes that
Muhammad, in relation to the whole world (cosmos), like the spirit ( al-nafs al-
natiqa) for each human being, while other prophets are like other spiritual facul-
ties [III. 186. 31] (see also Table 3.1). Then he indicates that the world before the
appearance of the Prophet Muhammad was like a foetus in the womb of the
mother [III. 187.6], and that after the passing away of Muhammad the world is
like a sleeping - not dead - person [III. 187.1], until, in the next world, all the
world shall ‘live’ (have real life and awakening) through the full appearance of
Muhammad in his complete composition [III. 1 87.8]. Thus he goes on to note
that people in the Gardens and Gehenna are like the different (spiritual and mate-
rial) parts of the earthly human being, where the people of Gehenna are like the
relatively lifeless (yet not completely dead) hair and nails [III. 187. 10]. So in this
way the world is a like an ‘immense human being’ ( insan kabir), while the fully
human being is like a microcosm ( alam saghir ). 18
Many earlier Muslim theologians have tried to explain that Allah did not
mean by the Qur’anic references to the ‘Days’ of creation those same earthly
days that we live in, because they claimed that the sort of days that we know
could not be existing yet, prior to the completion of creation. In contrast, Ibn
‘Arabi stresses that those ‘Days’ of creation in reality coincide with these same
observed and experienced days. At the same time, he also acknowledged that
this (cosmic) ‘Day’ existed before the creation of the heavens and the Earth,
while the (earthly, observed alternation of) daytime and night-time were only
determined afterwards by the creation of the Sun.
On another level, Ibn ‘Arabi’s complex, unique interpretation of those many
verses in the Qur’an (and the Bible) that talk about the creation in six Days is
promising in terms of modem astronomy and cosmology, because it suggests the
first real unification between space and time, as well as a sense in which the
‘Week’ may have a very important, and not simply conventional, real signifi-
cance.
However, there are still some further issues that need to be settled in order to
understand the meaning of the Week, its movement through the signs of the
zodiac and its detailed role in the process or stages of creation. We shall devote
Chapter 4 to explaining Ibn ‘Arabi’s complicated theory of the ‘Actual Flow of
Time’ and Chapter 6 to outlining a complete model of the cosmos based on Ibn
‘Arabi’s unique view of time and his theory of the oneness of being, which will
be discussed in Chapter 5.
4 The actual flow of time
As we already explained, Ibn ‘Arabi showed that the creation of the world by
Allah is a ‘series’ process. That is, He creates only one event at a time (or indeed
in each Day), as Allah says: each Day He is upon some (one) task (55:29). Yet
we observe multitudes of different events happening apparently at once. Accord-
ing to Ibn ‘Arabi, the way to understand this apparent paradox is to correct our
view of the flow of time.
Ibn ‘Arabi shows that the actual flow of time (the divine creative ‘Week’ as
the basic unit of space-time) is not the witnessed flow from Sunday to Monday
and so on to Saturday. These normal days of the week that we witness are the
‘c/rcw/ataaP days, and not the actual divine Days (the ‘Days of Event’) in which
only one single event should be happening each and every single Day. In order
to define or construct the actual cosmic ‘Days of events’, we need first to attach
each night-time to its own daytime, for again the underlying metaphysical con-
nection is not as we observe: i.e. the (‘real’) night-time of each daytime is not
the observed night-time that precedes or follows this daytime, but rather it is
‘ taken out ’ and separated from its own daytime by three daytimes and three
night-times. This extraordinary connection, Ibn ‘Arabi explains, is symbolically
related to our three-dimensional structure as human beings. Finally, he also
affirms (according to Qur’anic indications), that the actual Days of events are
‘ intertwined ’ with the observable, ‘circulated’ days in a specific manner that he
details in his book Kitab Ayyam Al-Sha ’n ( The Book of the Days of Task).
So we shall first explain in this chapter the meanings and the relations
between those three metaphysically distinct types of days: the ‘circulated’ days
( ayyam al-takwir), the taken-out days ( ayyam al-salkh) and the intertwined days
{ayyam al-ilaf). There we shall see that, on the basis of the hypothesis of ‘inter-
twining’, Ibn ‘Arabi introduces a unique new concept of time (and space) that
has apparently not been discussed before. Finally, we turn to explaining the dis-
tinctive motion of each Day in the zodiac and the kinds of effects that are caused
in the world in these Days. And at the end of this chapter we shall see the divine
origin of dividing the normal days into hours, minutes and seconds.
The actual flow of time 101
4.1 The original days of event
We have explained in sections 2.15-16 that there is a minimum ‘Day’ which is
that indivisible duration of time called ‘the Single Day’ ( al-yawm al-fard). And
we showed that this Day - when taken globally, or indeed universally (since it
encompasses all of manifest creation) - actually includes our normal day, though
we encounter it in fact just as a moment. In each one of these moments/Days
there is only one global cosmic ‘event’ happening in each part of the entire
cosmos. These Single Days are the original cosmic Days which are called the
divine ‘Days of event’ ( ayyam-ul-sha ’n), as discussed in the preceding chapter
and Chapter 2. For in each Day of event (or divine ‘task’) Allah creates a single
event actually encompassing every entity and phenomenon of the whole mani-
fest world. As He said in the Qur’an: ‘ each Day He is upon a (single) task"
(55:29).
Ibn ‘Arabi points out that ‘in each day of our normal days, that is from sunset
to sunset or from sunrise to sunrise, there is the end of 360 days’ [ Ayydm Al-
Sha’n: 6] (assuming the circle is 360 degrees). 1 That is because in every moment
of the normal day that there is the end (or the beginning) of a day in one place,
there is a corresponding beginning (or end) of another day in another place.
To explain this further, let us divide the circumference of the Earth into 360
longitudinal lines and the day into 360 degrees of longitude. Therefore, any
whole day that we encounter in any specific place is a combination or the sum of
the ends (last degrees) of 360 days from other places on the Earth; or in the same
way, it is the sum of the first degrees of 360 days around the Earth. For example
let us suppose that we are on the first longitudinal line at the first degree of the
day, then the second degree of this day on this first longitudinal line is the first
degree of the day beginning on the second line, and so on. In another way we
can also say that the 360 degrees of the ‘day’ on the first line are the collection
of the last degrees of the lines 360, 359, 358 and so on up to line number 1.
Therefore in every moment there is one full day around the Earth: now, for
example, it is morning somewhere, noon somewhere else and evening and mid-
night in other places; but all in total is a single full day (see also section 2.15
above).
So the flow of these original Days marks the actual sequence of events that
spans space and time. But, because we live in and can only observe a tiny point of
the whole space of the globe, we encounter linear time as our normal observed
days of the week (i.e. the ‘circulated days’ described in the next section). There-
fore, these original ‘Days of event’ are intertwined with our normal observed days.
4.2 The ‘circulated’ days (ayydm al-takwir)
Then if we stick to one place and watch the flow of time, we see that the Sun
sets, for example, at the beginning of ‘Sunday night’ (i.e. the night that begins
before Sunday daytime); 2 and then it rises on Sunday morning, and so on until it
completes a full week on the following Sunday night. This is the witnessed
102 The actual flow of time
week, and its days are the normal days, or the witnessed days. Ibn ‘Arabi calls
them the ‘circulated days’ ( ayyam-ul-takwir ), 3 because they (daytimes and
nights), seem to run after each other in a circle, as Allah says in the Qur’an:
He created the Heavens and the Earth through the real. He causes the night-
time to encircle (v. yukawwiru) the daytime, and the daytime to encircle
the night-time. He has subjected the Sun and the Moon: each one follows a
(designated) course for a time appointed. Is He not the All-Mighty, the All-
Forgiving?
(39:5)
So we can also say that the daytimes are circulated around the nights, and the
nights are circulated around the daytimes, because the daytime and the night are
like hemispheres surrounding the Earth all the time, but running after each other
as if they were seeking each other, as Allah said in THE Qur’an: ‘ Lo! Your Lord
is Allah Who created the Heavens and the Earth in six Days then mounted He on
the Throne. He covers (yugshi) the night-time with the daytime, which is in haste
to seek if (7:54).
The Arabic word yugshi in this verse not only means ‘to cover’ but also ‘to
embrace’ [Ayydm Al-Sha’n : 7], and it is particularly used for marriage. Thus Ibn
‘Arabi suggests that it is as if the daytime and the night are seeking each other
because they want to ‘marry’ each other, to produce children - since we and
everything else in the world are all the ‘progeny’ of the daytimes and nights
[Ayydm Al-Sha’n: 7]. This ‘abstract marriage’, is a basic concept in Ibn ‘Arabi’s
cosmological teachings, and we shall come back to it shortly.
We conclude that in every normal day (i.e. circulated day) as we observe it in
one specific place on the Earth, a vast number of ‘Days of events’ happen, as
many as there are indivisible moments in this day. In other words, in every
moment that we encounter on the Earth, there is a Day of event happening that
encompasses the whole world or cosmos (all of creation). Yet each Day of event
is also composed of the seven distinctive Days of creation, the divine creative
‘Week’ described in detail in the previous chapter.
4.3 The ‘taken-out’ days
Allah said in the Qur’an: ‘A token unto them is the night-time: We take the
daytime out of it, and lo, they are in darkness ’ (36:37). Ibn ‘Arabi points out that
this seems to indicate that night is the origin, and that daytime was somehow
‘hidden’ in it and then was taken out of it [Ayydm Al-Sha’n : 9, 11.647.20]. In
other words, as Ibn ‘Arabi explains [1.716.15], the night is like a dress or a skin
over the daytime, and then Allah takes the daytime out of the night so that the
world - which was in the absolute darkness of the divine ‘Unseen’ ( al-ghayb ) -
is created (i.e. so that it appears in the light of actual existence).
Ibn ‘Arabi, however, argues that Allah did not specify in this verse which
daytime was taken out of which night, and so this has to be clarified. For it is
The actual flow of time 1 03
not, as we might think, that each daytime (that we witness) was taken out of its
own night. We have to seek the true relation between each daytime and its night,
and this relation, Ibn ‘Arabi says [11.445.32, III. 203. 30], is based on the first hour
of the daytime and the night-time, because each hour of the daytime and the
night-time has a ruler; one of the five planets, the Sun, or the Moon (correspond-
ing to one of the seven principal divine Attributes: see section 3.4); so each day
is named after the planet that rules the first hour of it. For example: the first hour
of Sunday is ruled by the Sun, and that is why it is so named (in English and
many other languages); likewise Monday is the day of the Moon, and so on. In
Arabic, however, the names of the days of the week do not have direct relations
with the names of the planets that rule these days, but this connection still forms
a basic principle in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of time.
But before we discuss this further and assign each night to its actual daytime,
we should understand the exact meaning of ‘taking out’ the daytime from the
night, or the night from the daytime. Ibn ‘Arabi regards the different daytimes
and night-times as ‘parents’ to what Allah creates in them: so everything that
happens in the daytime is like a ‘son’ whose father is the night and whose
mother is the daytime; and everything that happens in the night is like a son
whose father is the daytime and whose mother is the night | Ayydm Al-Sha’n : 7;
11.445.18]. As Allah said in the Qur’an: ‘ He merges (yuliju ) the night into the
daytime, and He merges the daytime into the night’ (57:6). So there is a kind of
abstract, generative ‘marriage’ between daytimes and nights, but where nights
and daytimes exchange their parental roles from being fathers to being mothers,
and vice versa. That is why they are ‘intertwined’, as we shall see further below.
Now Ibn ‘Arabi explains that when the daytime turns from being father into
being mother or vice versa, this is what is meant by the Qur’anic reference to its
respective ‘stripping-out’ or ‘taking-out’ ( salkh ). So when we say that this
daytime ( nahar ) is taken out of that night-time ( layl ), it means that this daytime
and night exchange their generative ‘parental’ roles, although together they are
always like a couple, i.e. a single ‘day’ (yawm).
Ibn ‘Arabi adds that Allah did not explicitly mention that night is also taken out
of the daytime, since it is readily understood from the same Qur’anic verse [Ayy’dm
Al-Sha’n: 8; 1.141.6, 1.716.11]. On the other hand, Ibn ‘Arabi indicates that the first
hour of the daytime and that of its own night (which was taken out of it) should be
ruled by the same planet [Ayydm Al-Sha ’n: 10]. For in order to consider the daytime
and the night-time as one unitary day, they have to be ruled by the same (cosmolog-
ical, planetary) ‘ruler’. This applies only to the first hour of the daytime and the
night, because each of the other hours (of the observable, earthly days) is coming
from other cosmic ‘Days’ as a result of their overall ‘intertwining’:
Now when these planets moved in their orbs, Allah made for each planet
a (specific) Day among the Days of the zodiac -orb motion. ... So He
defined for each Day (yawm) a daytime (nahar) and a night-time (layl),
and He distinguished between each night and its daytime by the rule of the
(particular) planet for that Day in which the daytime and night appeared.
1 04 The actual flow of time
So when you look to which planet the first hour of the daytime belongs, then
this planet is the ruler of that daytime. And when you look in the nights for
the night whose first hour belongs to this same planet which ruled the first
hour of the daytime, then this night belongs to this daytime.
[III.203.26]
Now that we have understood the meaning of the ‘taken-out’ days, let us see
which daytime was taken out of which night. As we pointed out above, Ibn
‘Arab! argues that there are three other daytimes and three other nights between
the daytime and the night from which it was taken out. That is because - as he
explains - the structure of the world is six-directional: three nights correspond-
ing to the directions down, left and back; and three daytimes corresponding to
up, right and front [Ayyam Al-Sha’n : 7]. Table 4.1 shows the resulting daytimes
of the week and the nights from which those respective daytimes were taken out.
Therefore, as we can see, there are three days between each daytime and its
partner night. Of course normally the observable earthly week will run starting
from the beginning of Sunday night, then Sunday daytime, then Monday night,
then Monday daytime, and so on. These are the normal ‘circulated’ days. The
‘taken-out’ days, however, as we see from this table above and in Figure 4.1, run
also starting from the beginning of Sunday night but leaving out three daytimes
and three nights jumping to Wednesday daytime (of the circulated days) and so on.
Therefore the flow of time for the taken-out days is different from the normal
circulated days. In order to understand the flow of the taken-out days let us show
the above relation graphically as in Figure 4.1. It is better to imagine this graph
in three dimensions because, as Ibn ‘Arabi indicated, the reason behind this
interference between the taken-out days and the circulated days is the three-
dimensional structure of the world that we live in [Ayyam Al-Sha’n: 7].
But what is the significance of conceiving the ‘taking-out’ daytimes and
nights in this way? In his book Ayyam Al-Sha ’n Ibn ‘Arab! explains that the
reason why there are three daytimes and three nights in the taken-out days is the
three-dimensional (or six-directional) structure of the space in which we exist. In
other books he (or rather, his later interpreter al-Qashani) 4 points out that the
Table 4. 1 The taken-out days
The daytime of .. .
was taken out of the night of. . .
4
Wednesday
Sunday
1
5
Thursday
Monday
2
6
Friday
Tuesday
3
7
Saturday
Wednesday
4
1
Sunday
Thursday
5
2
Monday
Friday
6
3
Tuesday
Saturday
7
Note
There are three daytimes and three nights between the daytime and the night that is taken out of it.
This table is summarized from Ayyam Al-Sha pages 6-7
The actual flow of time
105
Note
It helps to imagine the resulting loop in three dimensions ( x , y, z) as indicated graphically below.
word ‘day’ also means direction. So it appears to us as if our three-dimensional
world is built up as a unit in seven Days (a Week). Therefore the Week with its
seven Days is the unit of space-time, and not only time.
In chapter 302 of the Futuhat, Ibn ‘Arabi explains how the process of taking
the daytime out of the night is identical to taking the world out of non-existence
into the Tight’ of existence:
Now we have mentioned that the world was hidden in the (absolute) Unseen
( ghayb ) of Allah, and that this Unseen was like the shadow of a person. So
if something were taken out from the entirety of that shadow, it would come
out in the image of that shade - just as that shadow is itself in the image of
that of which it is a shadow. So the result of what is taken out of that shadow
is in the image of the person. Do not you see that light is what appears when
the daytime is taken out of the night-time?
So those things which were hidden in the night (of the divine ‘Unseen’)
appear by the light of the daytime. Therefore the daytime does not resemble
the night, but rather resembles the light, by the appearance of those things
through it. So the night was the shadow of the (divine existentiating) Light,
and the daytime, when it is taken out of the night, comes out on the image
106 The actual flow of time
of the Light. Likewise, the world, in its coming out of the Unseen, comes
out in the image of the world (already present in) the Unseen, as we said.
[III. 12.1]
So the process of creating the world out of non-existence is exactly like the
Qur’anic image of ‘taking the daytime out of the night’, because time in the end
is reduced to the instantaneous presence (or the events that happen in it). As
summarized in the passage just quoted, Ibn ‘Arab! says that the world already
exists in the all-encompassing foreknowledge of Allah, in the absolute Unseen
( al-ghayb al-mutlaq). Thus its emergence into manifest existence is like the
daytime: both of its states are ‘Light’, first hidden in the ‘shadow’ of the absolute
Unseen, and then when Allah takes the world out of that non-existence, just as
He ‘takes the daytime out of the night’. And because Allah had determined that
the manifest world would be three-dimensional, He created it ‘in six Days’ (or
directions). He could have created it in many ways, but Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that
the divine Ability does not overrule His Determination or destiny (qadar)\ it
only accomplishes what He has already determined (the maqdur) [ Ayydm Al-
Sha’n : 6]. Therefore, in order for the daytime (of the manifest world) to appear
in existence, there have to be three daytimes and three nights between this
daytime and the night that it was ‘taken out’ of [1.716; Ayydm Al-Sha 'n: 7]. Thus
in each Day Allah creates a direction, and in the six Days of creation (from
Sunday to Friday) Allah creates the world in (three-dimensional) space, while
Saturday accounts for the ‘Day of event’ or time wherein this world is displayed.
4.4 The ‘intertwined’ days
As we have mentioned before (section 2.15), Allah said in the Holy Qur’an:
‘ each Day He is upon some (one) task ’ (55:29). Since Allah did not say ‘tasks’
but rather a single task or event, Ibn ‘Arabi argues that the whole Day should be
under the effect of one single divine task. This, however, is not the case for our
normal, ‘circulated’ days and is clearly not the case for the ‘taken-out’ days we
have just described above, because we know that many different events are hap-
pening in each observable ‘circulated’ day.
Ibn ‘Arabi argues that the original Days of events in which Allah described
Himself as being ‘ each Day upon some task ’ are intertwined (or ‘entered into
each other’: mutawalija, from the verb yulijiv. ‘to enter into’) with the circulated
days in a specific manner, which he explains by dividing the day into 24 hours.
However, Ibn ‘Arabi emphasizes that this example is only for approximation,
since one could also explain this ‘intertwining’ on a smaller scale than hours
(e.g. minutes and seconds, or even smaller). The matter as he describes it is
already very complicated for 24 hours, although this may be possible to calculate
now using sophisticated computer programs.
Starting with the night of Sunday - because its name al-ahad (‘the First’, ‘the
Unique’) is a Name of Allah, it is the first day, and also it is the day of the Sun
that is the heart or centre of the manifest world [Ayydm Al-Sha ’n: 11] - Ibn
The actual flow of time 1 07
‘Arabi reconstructs the Days of events from the hours of the circulated days,
starting with the first hour of the night of Thursday, then the eighth hour, and so
on with seven-hour intervals until the full 12 hours of the night of Sunday are
completed. Then he moves on to ‘deconstruct’ the daytime of Sunday in the
same way, as illustrated in the Table 4.2 and Figure 4.2.
Then he moves on to analyse the night of (the circulated day of) Monday in
the same way, but starting from the daytime of Friday, and so on for the full
seven Days, as indicated in the following Table 4.3 and Figure 4.2.
4.4.1 Demonstrating the intertwined days
As can be readily seen from Tables 4.2 and 4.3, the flow of time for the ‘inter-
twined’ days is even more complicated than that of the taken-out days. This
Table 4.2 The intertwined days (example of Sunday alone).
Normal week days
SUN
MON
TUB
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
Hours
of night
1
~
~
-
~
SUN
~
-
2
-
-
-
-
-
-
SUN
3
-
SUN
-
-
-
-
-
4
-
-
-
SUN
-
-
-
5
-
-
-
-
-
SUN
-
6
SUN
-
-
-
-
-
-
7
-
-
SUN
-
-
-
-
8
-
-
-
-
SUN
-
-
9
-
-
-
-
-
-
SUN
10
-
SUN
-
-
-
-
-
11
-
-
-
SUN
-
-
-
12
-
-
-
-
-
SUN
-
Hours
of davtime
1
SUN
-
-
-
-
-
-
2
-
-
SUN
-
-
-
-
3
-
-
-
-
SUN
-
-
4
-
-
-
-
-
-
SUN
5
-
SUN
-
-
-
-
-
6
-
-
-
SUN
-
-
-
7
-
-
-
-
-
SUN
-
8
SUN
-
-
-
-
-
-
9
-
-
SUN
-
-
-
-
10
-
-
-
-
SUN
-
-
11
-
-
-
-
-
-
SUN
12
-
SUN
-
-
-
-
-
Note
The shaded background indicates the nights of the normal days, and bold font indicates the night-
time hours of the intertwined days. The data in this table are extracted from Kitab Ayyam Al-Sha
pp. 11-12.
108 The actual flow of time
Figure 4.2 The intertwined days, and their relation with the circulated days.
Note
The information in this figure is extracted from Kitab Ayyam Al-Sha pp. 11-16.
complex relationship is shown graphically in Figure 4.2. Again, it would be
more accurate to imagine this graph in three dimensions, but the graphic depic-
tion is already very complicated in two dimensions. (A more accurate approach
to what Ibn ‘Arab! is actually describing would be to simulate this on the com-
puter, taking into account smaller time-scales than hours.)
Figure 4.2 demonstrates how the 24 hours of each day of the normal circu-
lated days are distributed over the seven Days of events. The 24 hours of the
Day of Sunday for example (the 24-fold zigzag circle in the front) are distributed
over the normal week days, starting from the first hour of Thursday night and
moving with the seven-hour intervals already described.
Table 4.3 The intertwined days (all days)
The actual flow of time 1 09
Normal week days
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
Hours
1
of nights
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
2
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
3
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
4
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
5
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
6
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
7
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
8
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
9
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
10
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
11
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
12
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
Hours
1
of daytimes
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
2
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
3
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
4
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
5
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
6
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
7
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
8
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
9
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
10
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
11
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
12
SAT
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
Note
The shaded background indicates the nights of the normal days, and bold font indicates night hours
of the intertwined days. The data in this table are extracted from Kitab Ayydm Al-Sha pp. 11 -16
4.4.2 The significance of the intertwined days
The flow of time according to the intertwined days is the real flow, because it
indicates the manifest, outward order of events. The reason why there is a con-
stant seven-hour step, as in the Tables 4.2 and 4.3 and Figure 4.3, is that the
order of creation proceeds according to the seven main divine Names (and divine
‘Days’ of creation). For example, on Sunday (of the original Days of creation)
the world starts ‘hearing’ the divine Command, which initiates the first dimen-
sion in creation. Then once the Sunday cycle (i.e. of the divine Attribute ‘the
All-Flearing’) is over, the Monday cycle starts granting the world the attribute of
‘the Living’, and so on (see Table 3.1). Thus the manifest world gains the quali-
ties of these fundamental divine Attributes one after the other.
110 The actual flow of time
4.5 The motion of the seven days in the zodiac
The orb of the ‘fixed stars’, including the constellations of the zodiac and the
lunar mansions, is the second orb after the outermost Isotropic Orb, but it is the
first material orb, because the Isotropic Orb does not have any distinguishing
features (no stars or planets). We have already noted that Ibn ‘Arabi shows that
‘Allah created the Day in the first orb, and then defined it in the second orb,
which is the orb of the fixed stars (the zodiac)’ [Ayyam Al-Sha’n: 6], That is
because the motion of the Isotropic Orb can not be defined for the world beneath
it, because there is no reference point to assign a beginning or an end to this
motion. However, in the zodiac orb there is such a reference point: the 12 Signs
or constellations. So we can say that the days were first defined in the zodiac orb,
and each day represents a full cycle of this orb as observed from the Earth
[III.548.31; see also section 2.12 above]. Ibn ‘Arabi clearly showed that this orb
does not actually move as we observe it [11.441.33, 1.141.17, III. 549. 3], but that
we see it as moving because of the motion of the Earth around its centre
[1.123.17, 11.677.21, III.548.31] (see also section 1.4).
Ibn ‘Arabi takes the first degree in Gemini as the reference point to start
counting the cosmic ‘Days’ of creation, and he claims that this initial motion of
time in creation started when this point was matching the divine ‘Foot’ in the
‘Pedestal’ above the Isotropic Orb. It is very interesting to note that the first
degree of Gemini coincides with the galactic equator. 5 Moreover, recent studies
and some historical or archaeological records (Sitchin 1976: 197) show that this
point was used by ancient Sumerians as early as IIOOObc as a starting point for
the zodiacal calendar. He says:
And let it be known to you that this Name (‘the All-Sufficient’, al-ghani )
made this orb isotropic with no planets in it: all its parts are the same, and
it has a circular shape where you can not distinguish a beginning or an end
to its motion, and it has no edge. By the existence of this orb the seven days
came into being, and so months and years; but these (particular durations
of) times were not determined in it until Allah created, inside this orb, other
signs (galaxies, stars and planets) which determined these times.
This orb determined only one Day, which is a single cycle (of this orb)
beginning at the place of the (divine) ‘Foot’ in the Pedestal. So it was deter-
mined from above. The duration of this cycle is called a Day. But nobody
except Allah knows (the actual length of) this Day, because of the fact that
all the parts of this orb are the same, so (nobody knows) the beginning of its
motion. And the beginning of its motion was when the first degree of
Gemini, which is an orb (whose influence is associated with the lower mate-
rial element) of air, was matching this Foot.
Hence the first Day that appeared in the world was by the first degree of
Gemini, and this Day is called al-ahad (Sunday). So when this specific point
of this orb, which is known only to Allah, returned to match this Foot of the
Pedestal, a full cycle - that is, of the total orb (and its contents) - was com-
The actual flow of time 111
pleted and all the parts of this (isotropic) orb matched with the (initial) place
of the Foot from the Pedestal. So this motion came over every degree,
minute, second, and less than that of this orb. So the places came into being
and the existence of the single indivisible localized monad (of all manifest
creation) was determined from the motion of this orb.
[11.437.29]
That was the motion of the initial Day of the Sun (Sunday).
Then, at the end (of this initial Day), there began another motion, also from
the middle, 6 until that (second motion) reached its end/aim ( ghaya ), like the
first motion - together with the entirety of what (that sphere) contains of the
(smallest) parts ( ajza ’) and the individual entities that are composed of those
parts, because (that sphere) is quantitative. This second motion is called
Monday. And so on till it completed seven periodical motions everyone is
determined by a divine Attribute. And the (main) divine Attributes are seven,
not more, which made the Age not more than seven (distinctive) Days.
[11.438. 3]
This is shown better in Figure 4.3.
Thus the orb of the zodiac (fixed starts) executes only seven distinctive
cycles, which are then repeated that over and over again. Each Day of these
seven Days of the divine creative Week is called a ‘Day of event’, in which only
one single event happens, because it is ruled by one primary divine Name of
Allah. So there are seven Days of events, each related to one particular divine
Name from the seven fundamental Names mentioned in section 3.4.
4.6 The kinds of events
Now in each ‘Day of event’ that is intertwined with the outwardly observable
(normal earthly) ‘circulated days’ as described above, Ibn ‘Arabi explains that
Allah constantly inspires the Universal Soul to act upon the orbs below it -
encompassing and giving rise to all the manifest, material cosmos - so that they
move in a specific manner that will cause one particular kind of event in the
cosmos. But the effects of this complex composite motion of the orbs will be dif-
ferent, depending on the capabilities and characteristics of individual creatures
[Ayyam Al-Sha’n : 11—12]. For example, when Allah inspires the Soul to move
the element of fire in order to heat the world, the effects of this single event
depends greatly on the individual creatures: those which are ready to bum will
bum, and those which accept heat will be heated, and so on [Ayyam Al-Sha 'n:
6], and he explains further in the Futuhat that:
the (divine creative) “Event”, in relation to the Real (i.e., God lal-haqq), is
one from Him; but with relation to the acceptors of the world it is many
events that we would call infinite, were they not confined by (their shared
quality of) existence.
[II. 82. 6]
112 The actual flow of time
Figure 4.3 The Zodiac and the motion of the days in it.
Note
Notice that this refers to the apparent rotation of the sphere of the fixed stars, while the actual
astronomical motion is due to the revolution of the Earth. The 12 zodiacal signs are divided
into four groups whose influences are related to the four material elements (earth, water, air and
fire), as described in the preceding chapter; each group contains three signs of the same nature.
The motion of each cosmic Day starts at the first degree of Gemini.
Ibn 1 Arabi describes in his Kitab Ayydm Al-Sha ’n the different kinds of events
that are particularly associated with each Day of the seven Days of the original
divine ‘Week’ of event. There he also gives a ratio of ‘contribution’ by each one
of the seven heavens. These mysterious symbolic data and concepts are not very
easy to understand. However, we will summarize his remarks in Table 4.4 for
reference, although any attempt to interpret them would require a separate exten-
sive study.
The data in Table 4.4 are extracted from Kitab Ayydm Al-Sha’n\ 11-16. The
contributions are stated to be increments of one-fourth, probably alluding to the
equal role of the four basic elements of material Nature (fire, air, water and
earth). The — /— sign means that the corresponding data are not given in the text.
For Wednesday, Ibn ‘Arabi does not give detailed numbers, but simply says (p.
14) that ‘God ordered the spiritual realities to help the Soul according to their
corresponding strength’. The ‘j,’ indicates that the contribution is done only by
way of descent. Some of the data in this table are incomplete or not certain, as
the meaning of the original text is often unclear. 7
Table 4.4 The action of the soul (on the world) in each day of the seven days of events and the ratio of contribution by the seven heavens
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114 The actual flow of time
4.7 Hours, minutes and seconds
According to what we have now discussed in this and preceding chapters, the
day as we normally experience or observe it is the minimum period of time
defined by the apparent full revolution of the Heavens around the Earth (see sec-
tions 2.12 and 3.2). The original divine creative Days are single indivisible
divine ‘Acts’, but in the observed time that we experience, we live only one
moment out of each original Day (see section 2.15). Therefore, the normal day
as we know it is a collection of the moments from the different divine Days of
the creative Week, after the processes of ‘intertwining’ and ‘taking-out’ detailed
above. For this reason, the normal day can be conventionally subdivided appar-
ently infinitely, and smaller units of time can be conceived and measured.
Thus, the day is conventionally divided into 24 hours, and the hour is conven-
tionally divided into 60 minutes, which are also conventionally divided into 60
seconds each. This conventional hexadecimal system can be traced back to the
time of the Babylonians; it was used by many ancient civilizations and then
transferred by the Arabs to the West. In recent centuries, some more scientifi-
cally measurable definitions of these conventional units of time have been intro-
duced, specifically for the second. 8 So this hexadecimal system is now
internationally used, but after the second, smaller units of time are decimally
subdivided into 0.1, 0.01 etc., or 10" x seconds, where x could be in principle any
number no matter how large (for infinitely shorter times). 9
Ibn ‘Arab! referred to these further conventional subdivisions of observed
time in chapter 59 of the Futuhat, which is entitled ‘On the Inner Knowing of
the (actually) Existent and Conventional Time’. Here the original divine cosmic
‘Days of event’ are the actually Existent Time ( al-zaman al-mawjud) while the
other time-distinctions days, years, months, hours, minutes and seconds are only
conventional or ‘estimated’ ( muqaddar ). There he explains:
The (observable) ‘days’ are many: some are long, and some are short. The
shortest day is the ‘monad of time’ ( al-zaman al-fard) in which ‘7/e is in a
task ’ (55:29), so that (indivisible shortest) monad of time is called a ‘day’
because the (divine) ‘task’ happens in it: it is the shortest and tiniest time,
and there is no maximum term to the longest. Between them there are
intermediate ‘days’, the first of which is the conventional ‘day’ familiar in
customary usage, which is divided into hours, the hours into degrees, the
degrees into minutes, and so on. That goes on indefinitely, for those people
who also divide the minutes into seconds. Since it is ruled by (the principle
of) countability, (for them time) is like numbers; and numbers are infinite,
so this division is also infinite.
But some people say that (time) is finite, and they take this matter from the
perspective of what can (actually) be counted or ‘numbered’: those are (the
people) who advocate that time is an existing essence (because it is counta-
ble), and all that exists must undoubtedly be finite. But the opposing (group)
say that the countable, simply by the fact that it can be counted, does not
The actual flow of time 115
(therefore necessarily) enter into existence, so it is not described as finite,
because number is not describable as being finite. This is how those who
argue against the ‘single monad’ (or ‘indivisible atom’: al-jawhar al-fard pro-
posed by the kalam theologians) contend, (maintaining instead) that according
to the intellect body is divisible indefinitely. This topic of controversy among
the people of intellectual inquiry (i.e. kalam theologians and the philosophers)
happened as a result of their lack of good judgement and their inquiring (only)
about the meanings of words (instead of what is actually real).
[1.292.3]
However, for Ibn ‘Arabi this conventional division of time also has its divine
origin. He first affirms that the celestial orbs were divided into 360 degrees due
to the fact that the Universal Intellect (or the ‘Higher Pen’) was taught by the
‘Greatest Element’ (see sections 6.2 and 6.5) exactly 360 kinds of comprehen-
sive divisions of knowledge {''ulum al-ijmdl), under each of which there are 360
further divisions of detailed knowledge (‘ ulum al-tafsil ), that is 360 times 360:
So each degree (of the 360 total degrees of the outermost, all-encompassing
celestial sphere) includes all that it comprises of the details of minutes, seconds,
tertiary divisions, and so on, as Allah - the Exalted - wills to make manifest (of
that detailed Knowledge) in His Creation till the day of the Rising.
[1.295.12]
After that, in the same passage, Ibn ‘Arabi shows that Allah appointed 12
‘rulers’ ( wulat , s. wall), one in each of the 12 zodiac signs, which correspond to
the 12 months in the conventional year. Also there are 28 ‘chamberlains’ ( hujjdb ,
s. hajib ) in the orb of the constellations (i.e. the 28 houses of the Moon) which
correspond to the 28 days in the (divine) month (see section 3.2). Finally, in the
same passage he also says that Allah ordered those rulers to appoint seven
‘chiefs’ ( nuqaba ’, s. naqib) in the seven Heavens, one ‘chief in each celestial
sphere - i.e. the seven orbs which correspond to the seven Days of the cosmic
Week. Ibn ‘Arabi then adds that each one of those groups of spirits that are asso-
ciated with the celestial spheres has a living human ‘deputy’ or ‘agent’ among us
on Earth [1.296.27].
Ibn ‘Arabi even suggests a certain divine importance for the conventional
division of the day into 24 hours, in the following passage discussing the differ-
ent groups of the spiritual hierarchy of the ‘Friends of God’ ( awliya ’) in chapter
73 of the Futuhat [II. 2. 39]:
And among them (the awliva ’), may Allah be pleased with them, (are a group
of) 24 souls at any time, no more and no less. They are called the ‘Men of
(Spiritual) Opening’ (rijal al-fateh)\ through them Allah opens for the people
of Allah whatever He opens of (divine) knowledge and secrets. And Allah
made them according to the number of hours, one of them for each hour.
[II. 13.7]
116 The actual flow of time
Regarding the hours of the day and the two parts of it (the daytime and the
night), and their observable variations across the year and from one place to
another, Ibn ‘Arabi says:
Then Allah caused the (observable, earthly) daytime ( nahcir ) and the night-
time by the existence of the Sun - not the (true divine) Days (ay yam). And
as for what happens of (the observable) increase and decrease in the (length
of the) daytime and night - not in the hours, for they are (always) 24 hours
- that is because of the motion of the Sun in the zodiac region which is tilted
with regard to us, so the day becomes longer where it is in the high houses,
and when it comes to the low houses the day becomes shorter where it (i.e.
the Sun) is. We said ‘where it is’, because when the night becomes longer
for us the day becomes longer for others, so the Sun is in the high houses
for them and in the low houses for us. So when the day becomes shorter for
us, the night becomes longer for them as we said. But the day ( al-yawm )
itself is 24 hours: it does not increase or decrease, nor does it become longer
nor shorter in the equinox place.
[1.140.33]
5 Unicity and multiplicity
Examine the origin of existence, and think it through:
you will see the same (divine) Generosity, both eternal and created.
And the (created) thing is like the (eternal) thing,
except that He made it appear in the actual reality of the worlds as created.
So if the viewer swears that his existence is eternal (in the Unity),
he is honest and truthful, not lying;
But if the viewer swears that its existence (emerges) after its non-existence,
(that is) more appropriate - and then its [ existence ] is threefold.
[ 1 . 5 . 31 ]
In order to understand these novel concepts of time that we have explained in
previous chapters, we need to shed more light on Ibn ‘Arabi’s controversial
understanding of the oneness of being ( wahdat al-wujiid), because it is the key
to understanding his various views of time. Although he had never employed
this famous term directly, it is quite evident that this characteristic understanding
of the oneness of being strongly dominates Ibn Arabi's many writings: he
explains almost everything on the basis of the concept of ultimate unicity and
oneness. More specifically, the metaphysical structure of the world, how it
comes into existence, how it is maintained and its ontological relation with the
Creator can be explained only on the basis of the oneness of being.
In the light of the centuries of later polemics surrounding this conception, it
must be stressed that Ibn ‘Arabi’s conception of the oneness of being is com-
pletely different from such views such as pantheism or monism. Ibn ‘Arabi never
denies the basic distinction between the Creator and creations, and certainly
never contradicts the basic tenent of monotheism. Likewise, he strictly affirms
the Muhammadan revelation ( shari ‘a ) and accepts all the observed multiplicity
on the usual planes of manifest existence. Instead, his focus in applying the
oneness of being is on understanding the cosmos and how it works. It is these
particular cosmological aspects that we shall be interested in throughout this
chapter, so that we can explain Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of the creation in order to
understand his unique concepts of time and eventually to situate all those con-
ceptions within the comprehensive cosmological model outlined in Chapter 6
below.
118 Unicity and multiplicity
5.1 The contrasting approaches of Sufism and philosophy
We want to start this chapter by quoting Ibn ‘Arabi’s famous story of his first
encounter with the great Aristotelian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes, already
mentioned in section 1.7) when Ibn ‘Arabi was still relatively young, but already
famous for his immense knowledge and unique views. According to that
account, Ibn Rushd arranged with his friend - Ibn ‘Arabi’s father - to meet the
young mystic in order to hear what he had to say about (his Aristotelian) philos-
ophy. As Ibn ‘Arabi recounts this story in the Futuhat
And I entered one day in Cordoba into (the house of) the judge Abu al-
Walid Ibn Rushd, as he wished to meet me after he had heard about what
Allah opened up for me in my spiritual retreat, for he had been expressing
his admiration of (or ‘amazement at’) what he had heard. Then my father
- because he was one of (Averroes’) friends - sent me to him for something
on purpose in order (for him) to meet me. I was still young; my face had not
yet put forth a beard, and my moustache had not yet grown. 1
When I entered to see him he stood up for me out of love and respect,
embraced me and said (exclaiming): ‘Yes’! I replied: ‘Yes’. So his joy was
magnified because 1 understood him. Then I realized what made him feel
happy, and I said: ‘For Allah’s sake, No!’ Then he turned sad, his colour
changed and he doubted his philosophy.
Then he asked: ‘So how did you find it in unveiling ( kashf) and divine
effusion (fayd ilahi)7 Is it the same as what thought had led us (philoso-
phers) to?’ 1 replied: ‘Yes ... No, and between the “yes” and the “no”,
spirits fly away from their (bodily) matter and necks from their bodies.’
So his (face) colour turned pale, he began to tremble and sat down recit-
ing the hawqala [that is to say: la hawla wa la quwwata ilia bi Allah (‘there
is no power and no strength but in Allah’)], and he knew what 1 alluded to
(in responding) to him.
[1.153.33]
This mysterious exchange of these few words and gestures between these two
pillars of Islamic thought, a Sufi and a philosopher, is an attempt to express in
symbolic language what is very difficult to explain in more explicit language.
Ibn ‘Arabi alludes here to an essential realization that is beyond normal human
comprehension, something that is apparently against our everyday experience or
otherwise very difficult to believe. Yet on the other hand, it is something that can
be ultimately summarized in only two words: ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, or even ‘Yes’
alone, because ‘No’ is ‘not Yes’. 2 In fact, Ibn ‘Arabi’s ‘digital’ answer here:
‘Yes/No’ (or ‘1/0’, ‘True/False’, which ultimately amounts to existence/non-
existence) is the best and shortest expression of the creation - summarizing the
essence of the paradoxical metaphysical insights alluded to in the initial poem of
the Futuhat translated at the beginning of this chapter.
The difficulty of expressing this universal Reality in simple words comes
Unicity and multiplicity 119
from the fact that we live in a diverse world of infinite multiplicity, while at the
same time the truth or reality behind this world is literally too simple to be
believed [Al-Masa’il: 163], The ultimate Real is Allah, and Allah is uniquely
One, while the world is apparently many - so the metaphysical challenge is how
to link the (imaginary) multiplicity of the world to the Real One, through some
unseen intermediaries.
Philosophers and scientists in general try to understand the world through
observations, while the methods of Ibn ‘Arabi and other Sufis rely upon
modes of perception that jump directly into the unseen in order to approach
the Real directly. As Ibn ‘Arab! often points out, observations are subject to
many mistakes, owing to the inaccuracy of the tools employed, whether
human senses or technical equipment, while true visions - as opposed to our
sometimes problematic interpretations of them - are always correct [1.307.12,
III. 7. 21], 3 On the other hand, philosophers and scientists use logic and
experiments to deduce their theories and explain their observations, while Sufis
in general often describe their visions without paying too much attention to
explaining them in a logical manner, especially when some of their visions,
though real and true, may be outwardly or apparently illogical. 4 As a result,
certain Sufis like Ibn ‘Arabi may attain a very high state of knowledge of reality
more quickly and more accurately than philosophers (as Ibn ‘Arabi certainly
implies in his account of his meeting with Ibn Rushd), but they find it very
difficult to explain their views to others who have not ‘ tasted ’ it their way. So
when they try to explain their insights, not many people will understand what
they say.
The problem with the current laws and theories of physics and cosmology is
that so far, although they have proved to be quite accurate and powerful in appli-
cation, they have admittedly failed to unveil the ultimate reality behind the
world. All scientific theories are descriptive rather than determinative. We have
seen in section 1.3 that the reason why science was not able to determine the
reality of the world is that all cosmological models need a boundary condition:
i.e. an exact description of what was the initial state when the world started,
something which seems to be impossible to achieve by the intellect alone. That
is why scientists work backwards: i.e. they try to find out the initial state of the
cosmos by extrapolating in various ways from the current observations. As a
result, all physics theories and known cosmological models, though they have
achieved higher levels of understanding, have also brought new contradictions
and paradoxes. They have succeeded in providing approximate possible creation
scenarios, but failed to describe the reality itself. Although Ibn ‘Arabi considers
the intellect unbounded or unlimited as a receptive tool, it is quite limited as a
ratiocinative thinking tool because it relies on limited senses [1.288.27]. There-
fore, the intellect alone - as a thinking tool - cannot describe the origin of the
world because it is necessarily a part of it. Ibn ‘Arabi affirmed this when he said
that the limit of the observations of the philosophers (or astronomers) is up to the
Isotropic Orb which is the first (outermost, and first created) material orb
[11.677. 1]; they can not see or detect anything beyond that. That is why the Sufis
120 Unicity and multiplicity
rely on the ‘heart’ (the locus of spiritual ‘tasting’ and inspiration, in the language
of the Qur’an) rather than the discursive intellect.
On the other hand, Sufis have sometimes claimed to have achieved a high
state of realization and even to have visualized the metaphysical structure and
origin of the world (i.e. what physicists call the initial/boundary condition). Most
of them, however, did not give proper attention to explaining the observable uni-
verse and relating it to that initial cosmological state. Even Ibn ‘Arabi himself
did not care too much about that: instead he declared that his aims were not to
explain the world, but rather to acquire more knowledge of the world as a struc-
ture created according to the Image of Allah, so that he might acquire more
knowledge of Allah Himself. All the same, however, throughout the Futiihat and
other shorter books Ibn ‘Arabi often gives a great many cosmological explana-
tions and sometimes logical analyses of his metaphysical visions. This is why it
is very important to study Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings, since they may provide a real
link between philosophy and science, on the one hand, and mysticism and
theology.
5.2 Unicity versus multiplicity
Ibn ‘Arabi cited the story of his meeting with Ibn Rushd in the context of
explaining the words of the central spiritual Pole Idris (mitddwi al-kulum ) who -
as Ibn ‘Arabi said - knows very well about the natural world and the effects of
the higher world on it. Thus this Pole explained that ‘the world exists between
the circumference and the point’ [1.154.22], The ‘point’ here refers to the Real
(the ‘Necessary Being’) whose existence is self-existence, while the ‘circum-
ference’ is the circle of creations (the ‘possible’ or contingent entities) whose
existence depends on the Real. Beyond this circumference is the ‘sea’ of non-
existence (the impossible of existence). This relationship is illustrated in
Figure 5.1.
With regard to this image, Ibn ‘Arabi explained in chapter 47 of the Futiihat
[1.260.1] that the (divine creative Source-) point in the centre of a circle meets
any point in its circumference with its whole entity, without division or multi-
plicity. Similarly, multiplicity (i.e. all of creation) appears or emerges out of the
Unicity of the Real; the manyness of the world appears out of the One Creator,
without affecting His unique Oneness or Unicity. Ibn ‘Arabi was well aware that
this paradoxical relation between the Creator and all manifestation is in clear
apparent contradiction with the widely accepted philosophical maxim - a central
assumption in the prevailing contemporary philosophical cosmology of Ibn Sina
and his followers - that ‘from the One only one may emerge (or proceed)’ (la
yasdur ‘an al-wahid ilia wahid). 5
Given the assumption of this maxim, an obvious problem encountered by phi-
losophers and theologians when they want to explain how Allah created the
world is that Allah is One while the world is many. So logically it is not possible
to imagine a relation between the One and the many without affecting the unique
Oneness ( ahadiyya ) of the One.
Unicitv and multiplicity
121
Figure 5.1 The Real, the ‘Possible’ existents, and the ‘Impossible’
Note
This figure is taken from chapter 360 of the Futuhat [III.275],
However, Ibn ‘Arabi’s analogy between the pure mathematical symbol of the
circle and its centre and the cosmological process of creation by the One Creator
is not fully justifiable without further explanations. Among other problems,
mathematics and geometry work with infinitely small (or dimensionless) points,
while our contemporary science of physics and cosmology deals with corporeal
worlds that have dimensions. But we shall see below that Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique
understanding of time provides here the essential link between physics and math-
ematics, or between reality and imagination, in the same way as it does provide
the necessary link between unicity and multiplicity.
Ibn ‘Arab! quotes the above-mentioned emanationist philosophical maxim
quite often [1.42.14, 1.260.5, 11.31.14]. Although he disagrees with this general
proposition [1.260.5, 1.715.12, 11.434.20, and see also Al-Durratu Al-Bayda
140], he sometimes explains further that this notion can be held true for physical
beings but not for Allah Himself, because Allah, the unique One, can obviously
create multiple creations as we can clearly see:
So without their dependence (for actual existence) on the existing-entity
( ‘ayn) of the servant, there would be no rulership for those two Names (‘the
First’ and ‘the Last’). Because there (in eternity), the (divine) Essential-
entity (o/- ‘ayn) is (uniquely) One, not united (from different parts: mutta-
hida). But in the servant, (the existing-entity) is united (of different parts)
and not (uniquely) one, because Oneness ( al-ahadiyya ) is for Allah (alone),
and unification ( ittihad , the unification of the servant’s parts, senses, facul-
ties etc., and not the unification of the servant with his Lord because this is
122 Unicity and multiplicity
not possible in Ibn ‘Arabi’s doctrine) - and not the (divine) Oneness - is for
the servant. This is because the servant can only be understood in relation
to another (Who is his ‘Lord’ or his Creator), and not by himself: so he has
no trace of (the absolute divine) Oneness at all. But as for the Real, Oneness
may be understood (as applying) to Him (taken by Himself), or it may be
understood (as applying to Him) with relation (to others), since everything
belongs to Him, and indeed He is actually the Essence of everything. (This
unique divine Oneness refers) not to the wholeness uniting a collection
(of different entities: kulliyyat jam'), but rather to the (unique) Reality of
Unicity ( haqiqat ahadiyya) on which (all) multiplicity depends - and this
(unique Oneness) can only apply specifically to the (divine) Real.
So according to the determination of the (human) intellect, only one thing
can ever emerge from the One. But the Unicity of the Real does not fall
under that rule. How could He, Who created that rule, fall under it?! And
the (true) Ruler - there is no god but Him, the Almighty, the All-Wise (3:6,
3:18).
[11.31.11]
So now we can see how multiplicity may come out of the Oneness of the Real.
Yet we need to explain how this multiplicity of the creation appears from the
One Creator. We need to explain how the pure geometrical analogy of the circle
and its centre could be applied to the creation of the worlds by Allah.
Ibn ‘Arabi solves this riddle in part by inserting ‘time’, a true understanding
of time. Hence he says:
and He (the Real) has a special face ( wajh khass) towards everything that
exists, because He is the cause of everything. Now every (single) thing is
one, it cannot be two; and He is One. So from Him there appeared only one,
because He is in the oneness ( ahadiyya ) of every one (existing thing).
So if multiplicity exists, it would (only) be with regard to the oneness of
time that is the container (of that apparent multiplicity). For the existence of
the Real in this multiplicity is in the oneness of every one (existent). So
there appeared from Him only one. Therefore this is the real meaning of
‘from the One only one may emerge’: even if the entirety of the world
appeared from Him, there would only appear from Him one (created
reality), because He is ‘ with ’ 6 every one (of the creatures) with respect to its
oneness.
Now this is something that can be perceived only by the (truly enlight-
ened) ‘people of Allah’, 7 whereas the philosophers mean this [i.e. that from
one (cause) only one (effect) can emerge] in an entirely different sense, and
this is something about which they were mistaken.
[11.434.18]
Because of the rarity of the underlying spiritual perception of this reality
restricted, as Ibn ‘Arabi stresses, to the fully enlightened ‘people of Allah’, this
Unicity and multiplicity 123
passage just quoted above is not readily understood. Perhaps it is because of its
great importance and central role in Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmology that the famous
‘Abd-al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri, 8 the editor of the original Bulaq edition of the Futuhat
that is the basis for all modern versions, added a rare long footnote comment at
this point in the Futuhat [11.434-435] to explain it in terms of the oneness of
being. Because his comments here are very helpful in this regard, we shall
analyse them at length in what follows.
Here he explains that this passage refers to two related issues: ‘the one-ness of
every being’ ( wahdat hull mawjud) and ‘the unicity of Being ( ahadiyyat al-
wujudy. He begins by pointing out that everyone and every thing has a unique
‘face’ or individual reality that makes it distinctive; thus there are no two persons
or entities with the same reality, since otherwise they would be one (the same),
and not two. So this means that there appears from the One Creator only one
(reality) because this unique ‘special face’ is never repeated (see also section 2.8).
This explanation, however, is not entirely satisfactory (for our purposes, at
least), because the negation of repetition does not imply the negation of multi-
plicity, which is clearly witnessed in the world.
‘Abd al-Qadir then goes on to explain that we can reconcile the apparent mul-
tiplicity with the actual oneness of creation by correcting our view of time and
space. He says that our imagination pictures time as a container which contains
the things in the existence (as Newton later imagined time, but the theory of Rel-
ativity superseded his view, as we mentioned in section 1.3) so we see things
arranged in time (and space), and then we imagine multiplicity. But if we
imagine ourselves ‘out of time’, and look at the whole existence in time and
space, we shall see a single existence without a beginning and without an end,
and without any relation to a self-subsistent distinct time and space as we usually
imagine them. For example, every person is one despite having arms and legs
and many visible and invisible parts.
But again this explanation is not entirely satisfactory, since it shows the unity
of all being ( wahidiyya ), but not its unique metaphysical ‘unicity’ ( ahadiyya ). It
shows that the whole of existence is ‘one’ when we look at it as a single whole,
or from outside space and time. But still, since we actually perceive (or imagine)
ourselves as existing inside this space-time whole as partial entities, we also see
many other entities - or in other words, manifest multiplicity. So we still need to
explain how this multiplicity appears from the unique Oneness of the Real.
‘Abd al-Qadir then goes on to explain that if the philosophers meant by
saying ‘from the one there only emerges one’ that Allah created only the First
Intellect (which is the way this maxim was understood by Ibn Sina and most
Islamic philosophers), then this Intellect (alone) gave rise to the world. In one
sense this may be true for Ibn ‘Arabi, but he adds - as we have just seen at the
beginning of this section - that Allah has a unique Face specifically turned to
every single entity in the world, through Which its existence is preserved
[11.434.18], But in that case the philosophers are contradicting - or at least
failing to illustrate the relevance of - their own proposition (Ibn ‘Arabi also dis-
cussed these views in al-Durrat Al-Bayda: 142-143), because again the world is
124 Unicity and multiplicity
many and the First Intellect is one; so we still need then to explain how this mul-
tiplicity of the world appeared out of the First Intellect.
In Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, however, every individual entity in the world always
has a direct creative relation with Allah, and that is how its existence exists and
is maintained. If Allah did not maintain this creative ‘special face’ between
Himself and each entity, it would cease to exist instantly (Al-Durrat Al-Bayda’\
133). In order to solve the problem of unicity-multiplicity relation, Ibn ‘Arabi
actually asserts that this interface between the One and all the many existent
things does not happen all at once. Rather, at any instant, as we have just seen,
there is in reality a single relation or interface - a unique divine ‘with-ness’, as
he calls it (following the Qur’an) - between the One and each ‘one’ of the enti-
ties of the world. But what happens at this particular instant with the other enti-
ties in the world, since their existence is also preserved only through this unique
creative relation between them and their Creator, the unique One? The answer
is: they do cease to exist, and then they are (immediately) re-created again and
again [II. 385. 4], We shall discuss this central metaphysical principle of the
‘ever-renewed creation’ in section 5.6.
Therefore, in order to understand the relation between the unique Oneness of
the Real and the multiplicity of the creatures, Ibn ‘Arabi adds time to the previ-
ous philosophical statement, which can be then reformulated as: ‘from the One
there can emerge only one at a time’. This re-statement is indeed the key to
understanding Ibn ‘Arabi’s unique views of time and the oneness of being and to
solving the mystery of the relation between the Real and His creation. In this
way the world is created by Allah ‘in series’ (Al-Durrat Al-Bayda’: 139), and
not just one single time, just as the repeated images of a movie are displayed on
the television or computer screen.
Ibn ‘Arabi, moreover, affirms that this particular mode of creation was chosen
by Allah to be like that, although in fact He might have done it in any other way,
so it is not an (external) restriction over Him:
So this is not necessarily implied by the Existence of the Real: i.e. that
for example only one can emerge out from Him, and that this is impossi-
ble (otherwise). But He willed that and He wished it, and if He had wished
that the world should exist all at once, and that nothing were dependent on
anything (else), it would not be difficult for Allah [to make it like that, and
in this case - if Allah had wished that the world should exist all at once
- then we would be living in a different logic, but because Allah created it
in this way as it is now (ruled by the laws of causality: see also section 7.7),
we observe that from the one nothing might emerge except one at a time,
since otherwise this would violate the oneness of the Real according to our
current logic].
(Al-Durrat Al-Bayda 139)
The meaning of this principle is in fact derived directly from the well-known
verse in the Qur’an that we have already discussed in many earlier contexts:
Unicity and multiplicity 125
each Day He is upon some (one, single) task (55:29). Ibn ‘Arab! quotes this
verse most frequently in his discussion on time, and it is the basis of his unique
‘quantization’ of time. So since Allah is One, He does only one single creative
task each ‘Day’ - of course not this normal observable day that we encounter, in
which an almost infinite number of tasks or events are happening.
5.3 The unicity of God and His names
According to Ibn ‘Arabi and to Islam, and also some other religions, Allah is
both One ( Wahid) and ‘Unique’ ( al-Ahad , ‘the Unit’). 9 The first attribute means
that He is one God (not many) and the second attribute means that He is not
divisible into other entities. Moreover, as is indicated by the more metaphysi-
cally problematic second attribute of ‘Unicity’ ( ahadiyya ), we can not describe
Him as a single entity (like other entities) with specific dimensions that are
placed somewhere in space or began at a point of time. Allah is simply uniquely
different from whatever we may know or imagine. We can not achieve full
knowledge or awareness of the Essence (Dhat) of Allah because this is beyond
our perception. It is, however, possible to describe Him and speak about His
Attributes and divine Names, for example as they are mentioned in the Qur’an
and the Sunna. We may attain knowledge about the divine Names and descrip-
tions of Allah, but not about His Essence (Dhat) Himself. As Chittick has
pointed out, for Ibn ‘Arabi: ‘God is known through the relations, attributions and
correlations between Him and the cosmos. But the Essence is unknown, since
nothing is related to It’ (SDK: 62). Whatever the human being may know about
Allah is therefore in the end partial and incomplete. No one can ever achieve full
knowledge or awareness of Him; the maximum knowledge one might achieve of
the Essence of Allah is to know that He is different from anything [IV. 30 1.17].
Ibn ‘Arabi expressed this nicely in his prayers: ‘it is enough for me that You
know my ignorance. You are as I know, and beyond what I know to a degree
that I do not know’ (Beneito and Hirtenstein 2000: 131-132) 10 This is because
we may know Him only through His manifestations in us and in the world, but
His manifestations are never exactly repeated.
Human Being, however, is the creature most capable of knowing Allah, the
Exalted, because when He created Adam (the Perfect Human Being), He taught
him all the Names (2:31)" and ordered the angels to prostrate before Adam out
of respect and acknowledgement (2:34, 7:11, 17:61, 18:50, 20:116, 11.46.33).
But knowing Allah is an infinite process for us, because Allah Himself is not
finite, in the sense that He never manifests in the same form twice [1.266.10],
and also because His manifestations reveal some of his attributes and descrip-
tions, but do not fully reveal His ultimate Essence or Identity. Ibn ‘Arabi sum-
marizes this by saying, in one of his many elaborations of the famous Divine
Saying of the ‘Hidden Treasure’, that:
Allah, the Exalted, ‘loved to be known’ in order to grant the world the
privilege of knowing Him, the most Exalted. But He knew that His Identity
126 Unicity and multiplicity
(Essence) can not be (completely) known and nobody can ever know Him
as He knows Himself. The best knowledge that can be achieved about Him,
His Highness, in the world is that the knowers know that they do not know.
And this (human inability to know the Essence) is (also) called knowledge,
as the Righteous (Abu Bakr al-Siddiq) said: ‘The incapacity to attain reali-
zation is a realization. ’ 12
[III. 429. 7]
As Ibn ‘Arab! notes elsewhere, the Prophet Muhammad has also clearly
expressed this same recognition by saying: ‘I can not enumerate the ways of
praising Thee: Thou art as Thou has praised Thyself \Kanz: 2131, 3652,
1.126.15, 1.271.5, etc.], and Allah also said: ‘ but they do not encompass Him with
knowledge ’ (20:110).
Of course the Prophet Muhammad also said: ‘Allah has 99 Names, one
hundred less one: whoever enumerates them is going to enter the Garden’ \Kanz:
1933, 1934 and 1938]. However, this does not restrict the divine Names to 99,
as some Muslims misunderstand it. In fact Ibn ‘Arab! says that the divine Names
of Allah are countless and that everything in the cosmos is a divine Name. But
the 99 enumerated Names are the principal Names [IV.288.2] that have been
mentioned in Qur’an and Sunna. Moreover, although each Name of the divine
Names is different from others, Ibn ‘Arab! repeatedly cautions his readers that
all that Names are intrinsically implicit in each one of them, which is to say that
each Name can be described by all the other Names [1.101.5]. However, despite
the multiplicity of these Names, they all refer to the same One Absolute Essence
of Allah, while conveying different Attributes of Him due to His manifestations
and relations [1.48.23]. Multiplicity is not an intrinsic property of Allah Himself,
since Allah has many different Names only when considered with relation to His
creations:
The Names of the Real do not become plural and multiple except in man-
ifestation. But with respect to Him, the property of number does not rule
over them, not even its (the number’s) root, which is (the number) one.
So His Names, in respect to Him, may not be (exclusively or restrictively)
described by unity or multiplicity.
[11.122.19, see also Al-Masa 'il: 109]
So in fact even the Names ‘the One’, ‘the Unique’ and the like are not descrip-
tions of Allah with respect to Himself, but with respect to his creation. If we
suppose that there is no creation, there would be no need to describe Him by the
One or any other Name. Ibn ‘Arab! frequently points out that this is just like the
fact that the meaning of the number one is only introduced with regard to its
relation to the other numbers.
So Allah may be known only through His divine Names. And because these
Names are countless, our knowledge of Allah may never be complete. It is these
knowable divine Names that are actively engaged and manifested in the creation.
Unicity and multiplicity 127
That is why we see multiplicity and diversity in the cosmos. 13 In fact Ibn ‘Arab!
maintains that everything in the world is in essence a divine Name, simply
because everything is a cause that we need, and Allah says: ‘ you are in need of
Allah ’ (35:15) (III. 208. 7; see also section 7.7). Also He said that ‘7/e is the First
and the Last and the Manifest and the Hidden ’ (57:3). He manifests in all things,
so the things are not other than Him; but also the things are not (identical with)
Him, as we shall explain shortly.
However, we should take all these descriptions and names as mere approxi-
mations, because they are words spoken in our own language: the names (words)
that we know are actually the names of the Names, and not the Names them-
selves [11.56.33]. Although we may know about Allah by knowing His Attributes
and Names, those outward verbal Names are words in our language so that we
may, for example, look up their meanings in the dictionary, or even use them to
name and describe people and things. So although those same familiar words are
Names of Allah, their actual meanings are quite distinct when Allah is called by
them. For this reason Allah is named as al-fard (‘the Singular’), because He is
distinct (or ‘singled-out’: mutafarrid) from the creation [IV. 276. 33]. Also, all
His Names are described by their ‘singular uniqueness’ ( al-tafarrud ). As Chit-
tick has pointed out, those words that are revealed to us (through the Qur’an and
Sunna) are the outward forms {sura), while Allah’s own knowledge of Himself
is the reality or inner meaning {ma'na) {SDK: 34). Similarly the Names that are
revealed to us in everything in the cosmos are the outward forms, while the inner
meaning of those forms is Allah’s own knowledge of Himself. Ibn ‘Arab!
showed that:
Allah says: ‘'Call upon Allah or call upon the All-Merciful: whoever you call
upon, to Him belong the most beautiful Names’’ (17:110). So here He made the
most beautiful Names belong to Allah as they (also) belong to the All-Merciful.
But here there is a subtle point: since every Name has a meaning {ma'na)
and a form {sura), ‘Allah’ is called by the Name’s meaning, while the ‘All-
Merciful’ is called by the Name’s form. This is because the (divine) Breath
is ascribed to the All-Merciful, 14 and through this (creative) Breath the
divine words become manifest within the levels of the Void ( khala ’) where
the cosmos becomes manifest. So we call Him only by the form of the
Names (and only He Himself knows the real meaning of these names).
[11.396.30]
Therefore whatever knowledge we may acquire about Allah actually belongs to
His Name ‘the All-Merciful’, and the difference between the two Names is like
the difference between the form and the meaning. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, this
relation is a direct implication of the verse in Qur’an: 'the All-Merciful mounted
on the Throne ’ (20:5). In the first chapter of Al-Tadbirat Al-Ilahivya (p. 89),
which talks about the Universal Spirit {al-Ruh al-Kulli) - which is the ‘Greatest
Element/Single Monad’, as we shall see in sections 6.2-6 - Ibn ‘Arabi makes a
comparison between the Names Allah and the All-Merciful. Under a section
128 Unicity and multiplicity
called: ‘a secret for the special (people of Allah)’, Ibn ‘Arab! says that the differ-
ence between those two Names is like the difference between this Universal
Spirit on which Allah mounted (or established His authority) and the Throne on
which the All-Merciful mounted (or established His authority). We shall see in
section 6.6 that the same comparison can be made between the Single Monad
and the Greatest Element. Just as the divine Throne encompasses all the cosmos,
everything in the cosmos is related to the Name ‘the All-Merciful’ [11.467.21].
5.4 The metaphysical triplicity (‘trinity’) of the cosmos
According to Ibn ‘Arabi, as we have already mentioned in section 3.6, the divine
Names can be grouped into three categories: the Names of Essence ( asma’ al-
dhat), Names of Descriptions or Attributes {asma’ al-sifat) and Names of
Actions {asma’ al-af‘al) [1.423.20, 1.67.28, see also lnsha' al-Dawa’ir. 22].
Therefore the Universal Intellect or Adamic ‘Perfect Human Being’, who is
created ‘according to the Image of the All-Merciful’ [ Kanz : 1146, 1148, 1149],
came out with three faces because he is based on these three unique divine
dimensions [1.446.19, 11.434.16], although he is in essence one indivisible entity.
That is why Ibn ‘Arabi asserts that (everything in) the cosmos is built on a
kind of metaphysical triplicity [III. 126.21], and he later explains this further by
saying:
So the body is (composed of at least) eight points, just as the knowable
(aspects) of the Real are the Essence and the seven Attributes: They are not
Him, and They are not other than Him. (Likewise) the body is not other than
the points, and the points are not other than the body. Now we only said
that eight points are the minimum (required to compose) bodies because the
name ‘line’ is for two points or more. And the origin of the plane is from
two lines or more, so the plane is from (at least) four points. And the origin
of the body is from two planes or more, so the body is from eight points.
Therefore the name (attribute) of ‘length’ is applicable to the body from
the line (included in it); the name ‘width’ is applicable to it from the plane;
and the name ‘depth’ is applicable to it from the combination of two planes.
Thus the body is built on a triplicity (of dimensions: tathlith), just as the for-
mation of proofs (in syllogistic logic) is based on a threefold structure, and
just as the Source of existence - that is, the Real - only becomes manifest
through the bestowing of existence through three realities: His Entity, His
willing intention {tawajjuh) and His Speaking (the Command ‘Be’). Thus
the world became manifest ‘according to the Form’ of the One Who gives it
existence, both in sensation (i.e. the visible world) and in (its spiritual
dimensions of) meaning.
[III. 276.1]
For this reason - i.e. the threefold structures underlying all generative processes
- Ibn ‘Arabi emphasizes that we need two elements (subject and object) in order
Unicity and multiplicity 129
to produce a result (act) [1.278.14], because ‘from the one alone nothing may be
produced’ [III. 126.1],
In fact the metaphysical triplicity of subject, object and resulting act is funda-
mental throughout Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmology. Thus he summarizes the process of
creation by saying that the Universal Intellect (subject or symbolic ‘father’) is
writing down in the Universal Soul (the object or ‘mother’) all that Allah wants
to create till the Last Day (i.e. the result or ‘son’) [Ayydm Al-Sha’n : 7-8] (see
section 4.3). Indeed Ibn ‘Arabi even wrote a separate treatise dedicated to
explaining certain threefold structures of expression and meaning in the
Qur’an. 15 It is noteworthy in this regard that the metaphysical concept of triplic-
ity is also fundamental in many other ancient religions and philosophies, includ-
ing the Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian, Roman, Japanese and Indian. 16
For this reason, Ibn ‘Arabi regards the number three as the first ‘single’ (or
odd: fardi) number, because he consistently considers that one is not a number
(since the Arabic word for ‘number’, ‘adad, implies multiplicity), while two is
the first number. But since the number two is even, nothing may be formed
without a third, intermediate principle to link or interface between the one and
the two:
So no contingent entity ( mumkin ) has come to exist through one (alone), but
only through a plurality (or ‘conjunction’ of elements: jam‘), and the least
of plurals is three. 17 So since the (divine) Name ‘the Singular’ ( al-fard) is
threefold in its effects, He gives to the contingent entity that He brings into
existence those three things (i.e. Essence, Will and the creative Command)
that He must unavoidably consider, and (only then) He brings (the contin-
gent thing) into existence.
. . . Therefore this (metaphysical principle of) triplicity runs inwardly
through the totality of all things, because it exists in the (divine creative)
Source.
[III. 126.5]
Now the Universal Intellect is the intermediary reality (also called barzakh or
‘connector’) between Allah and the world, and therefore It has two interfaces: It
faces Allah from the side of His unity, and It faces the world from the side of
His threefold creative dimensions. When It faces Allah (in order to perceive
knowledge), It turns away from us (the world), and this is our ‘night’; and when
It faces the world, this is our ‘daytime’ or manifest existence. The Perfect
Human Being or First Intellect is - according to the famous hadith already dis-
cussed above - the ‘Image’ or ‘Form’ of the Real, and likewise the world is the
subsequent image of this Perfect Human Being. Hence the manifest world, like
the Perfect Human Being, is ‘according to the Image’ of the Real Himself -
although without the Perfect Human Being it could not participate in this perfec-
tion (see section 3.1). So if we consider the manifest images of the world, we
can potentially discover the face of the Perfect Human Being reflected in it, and
if we come to know the Perfect Human Being, then we also come to know Allah.
130 Unicity and multiplicity
So this is the fundamental ontological triplicity of ‘Allah-Human Being-world’
or ‘Allah-intellect-world’ [1.125-126].
According to Ibn ‘Arabi, this fundamental triplicity of Allah-Human Being-
world is manifested again within each human being as in our threefold nature as
spirit-heart-body. The spirit is the single immaterial and mysterious divine
reality that is the principle underlying life and creation, while the body is the
place where this creation occurs in many different ways, so it is composed of
many different material parts (multiplicity). And the heart is the link between the
body and the spirit through which the spirit exerts its effects on the multiplicity
of the body. On the other hand, the sensations collected by the body are eventu-
ally raised up to the spirit as spiritual (immaterial) meanings and realities.
Another favourite symbolic triplicity for Ibn ‘Arabi, deeply rooted in the
symbolism of the Qur’an and certain key hadith, is the astronomical triplicity of
the Sun-Moon-Earth. 18 The Earth gains its life from the Sun, and when the Sun
does not face the Earth from a specific direction, the Moon takes part and reflects
the light of the Sun with a degree that is small or large according to its relative
place in space. In fact, if one wants to look at the Sun, one is instead obliged to
look at the Moon when it is full, because the Sun can not be seen unveiled at all,
since it will bum up everything that its direct light falls on. This symbolism is
directly connected, for Ibn ‘Arabi, with the famous ‘hadith of the veils’, accord-
ing to which Allah has 70,000 veils of light and darkness, such that if He
removed those veils His light would bum everyone who tried to see Him directly
[Kanz: 29846, 39210],
Indeed the trinity of Sun-Moon-Earth particularly well illustrates Ibn
‘ Arabi ’s view of the creation and its relation to the Creator. Although the crea-
tion by Allah is done ‘through’ the Universal Intellect, Ibn ‘Arabi also empha-
sizes that Allah also has a direct, ‘individual face’ turned toward every single
entity in the world. Similarly the Sun does not only give its light indirectly
through the Moon, but also much more directly to the Earth, so everything on
Earth is connected with the Sun in the course of the day with different degrees
and at different times.
5.5 The oneness of being
The ‘oneness of being’ ( wahdata al-wujud ) is one of Ibn ‘Arabi’s most contro-
versial doctrines which many later Muslim scholars attributed to him, usually
with very different (and often more polemic than philosophical) meanings and
interpretations. Although Ibn ‘Arabi himself never mentioned the precise term
‘ wahdata al-wujud'' in his writings, 19 it is quite evident that Ibn ‘Arabi’s books
are full of statements that develop notions related to the oneness of being in
one way or another, in many places quite explicitly and rigorously. This is
especially the case in his most controversial book, Fusiis al-Hikam, for which
he was widely criticized, but related discussions are also to be found throughout
the Futuhdt and his other shorter works. Indeed the possible misunderstandings
of this conception clearly underpin Ibn ‘Arabi’s distinctive multi-layered,
Unicity and multiplicity 131
intentionally ‘scattered’ rhetoric and writing style throughout the Futuhat and
other works, as he explained quite clearly in the key Introduction to the Futuhat
itself.
The basic ontological issue for Ibn ‘Arabi is very clear and simple: in many
places throughout his writings, such as the long chapter 198 of the Futuhat
[11.390-478] he follows the established Avicennan distinction, familiar to all stu-
dents of Islamic theology and philosophy by his time, in dividing all conceivable
things, in terms of existence, into three basic categories (see also section 2.3).
There he says:
Know that the matter (of the nature of the reality) is the Real ( al-haqq )
and the creation ( al-khalq): that is the absolute Existence that has always
been and always is (existing); and absolute (contingent) possibility ( imkan )
that has always been and always is (possible to exist); and absolute non-
existence that has always been and always is (non-existing). Now the abso-
lute Existence does not accept non-existence, (and that applies) eternally
and perpetually. The absolute non-existence does not accept existence, (and
likewise that applies) eternally and perpetually. But the absolutely possible
does accept existence through an (ontologically determining) cause, and it
also accepts non-existence through a cause - and (that contingent ontologi-
cal status also applies) eternally and perpetually.
So the absolute Existence is Allah, nothing other than Him. The absolute
non-existence is the impossible-to-exist, nothing other than it. And the abso-
lutely possible (of existence) is the world, nothing other than it: its (ontolog-
ical) level is between the absolute Existence and absolute non-existence. So
in so far as some of it faces non-existence, it accepts non-existence; and in
so far as some of it faces Existence, it accepts existence. So some of it is
darkness, and that is the Nature. And some of it is light, and that is the
‘Breath of the All-Merciful’ [that is the ‘real-through-whom-creation-takes-
place’ ( al-haqq al-makhluq bihi ), see sections 6.3 and 6.5] which bestows
existence upon this possible (realm of created beings). 20
[11.426.26]
After that Ibn ‘Arabi explains the different types of Creation according to this
creative Spirit - or the divine Name ‘Light’, which he often uses as synonymous
with the divine creative and existentiating power - is attached to the ‘dark’, con-
tingent form of the creatures. Then he goes on to gives the crucial analysis which
clearly explains his profound view of the oneness of being in the most explicit
and direct way, based on evident verses in the Qur’an. He says:
So the possible (contingent) existence became manifest between light and
darkness, nature and spirit, the unseen and the visible, and the ‘veiled’ and
unveiled. Therefore that which is close to ( waliya ) absolute Existence, from
among all that (contingent realm) we have mentioned is light and spirit, and
all of what we have mentioned which is close to absolute non-existence is
132 Unicity and multiplicity
‘shadow’ and body - and from the totality (of those different kinds of con-
tingent existent) form (sura: of the whole of creation) comes to be. So when
you consider the world from the side of the Breath of the All-Merciful, you
say: ‘It is nothing but Allah’. But when you consider the world with regard
to its being equally balanced and well-proportioned (i.e. between exist-
ence and non-existence), then you say these are creations (makhluqat). So
[in the famous Qur’anic expression of this fundamental ontological reality,
addressed to the Prophet]: ‘ you (Muhammad) did not throw’ , inasmuch as
you are a creation [so that it is God who was really acting], ‘ when you did
throw’, inasmuch as you are real ( haqq a " ), "but Allah threw ’ (8:17), because
He is the Real (al-Haqq).
For it is through the (divine creative) Breath that the whole world is
‘breathing’ (animated with life), and the Breath made it appear. So (this cre-
ative divine Breath) is inner dimension {batin') for the Real, and the manifest
dimension ( zdhir ) for creation: thus the inner dimension of the Real is the
manifest dimension for creation, and the inner dimension of creation is the
manifest aspect of the Real - and through their combination the generated
existence ( al-kawn ) is actualized, since without that combination it would
(only) be said to be Real and creation. Thus the Real is for the absolute
Existence, and creation is for the absolutely possible. So what becomes non-
existent of the world and its form that disappears is through what is close to
the side of non-existence; and what remains of it and does not allow for
non-existence is through what is close to the side of Existence. Hence these
two things (Existence and non-existence) are continually ruling over the
world, so the creation is always new with every Breath, both in this world
and in the hereafter.
Therefore the Breath of the All-Merciful is continually directed (toward
the Act of creation), and Nature is continually taking on existence as the
forms for this Breath, so that the divine Command does not become inac-
tive, because inactivity is not appropriate (for It). So constantly forms are
newly appearing and becoming manifest, according to their states of readi-
ness to accept the (divine creative) Breath. And this is the clearest possible
(description) of the (divine) origination ( ibda ) of the world. And Allah says
the truth and He shows the way (33:4).
[11.427.17]
To summarize, therefore, this expression implies that the world can be conceived
symbolically as a mixture of light and ‘darkness’. For Ibn ‘Arabi, this darkness
is quite literally nothing: it is simply the absence of light. 21 Light, on the other
hand, is ultimately the Real (via the divine Name ‘The Light’, al-nur ), and the
Real is One. So all existence is in essence one. Multiplicity appears through cre-
ation as a result of mixing the oneness of light with the darkness of non-exist-
ence. In other words, we can say - since darkness is nothing - that the creation
is the constantly repeating relative appearance (manifestation) of the Real. The
Real manifests most perfectly in the Perfect Human Being, and relatively in
Unicity and multiplicity 133
other creatures, and these manifestations happen through the Universal Intellect.
So in real existence there is only the Real Who is Allah and this Universal Intel-
lect who is the Messenger of Allah. So there is in fact no ontologically self-sub-
sistent ‘evil’, since the creation is all good - an aspect of this cosmological
conception which, taken out of context, could easily give rise to obvious reli-
gious and ethical objections. Hence what we perceive as evil is in reality the
absence of good, just as darkness is the absence of light. 22
Thus this is the basic principle, but in order to understand it we need to
explain how the mixing between light and darkness is done, which is again to
say: ‘how is the world created?’ - which raises the question of time yet again.
Ibn ‘Arabi’s understanding of this process of creation or cosmogony will be
developed further below and in sections 9.7-8.
Given the possible confusions and misunderstandings surrounding this under-
standing of creation, it is clear why Ibn ‘Arabi never declared these ideas in
overly simplistic terms in his books, but rather scattered them throughout his
writings - as he explains quite explicitly at the very beginning of his Futuhat
[1.38.25] - so that the common people would not misunderstand them (as indeed
happened in later times) and so that only those properly ‘prepared’ would be
able to discover their profound intended meanings.
Moreover, we have to admit that Ibn ‘Arabi takes it a courageous step further:
although the Universal Intellect, and hence the entire manifest world, is created
by Allah, Ibn ‘Arabi emphasizes that it also is not ‘other than Allah’ (SDK: 1 13),
because ultimately only Allah has real absolute and necessary (independent)
existence [1.194.8], and the world exists by and through Him not by itself. As
Chittick has summarized this perspective (SDK: 81), if Ibn ‘Arab! was asked the
question: ‘Are the things the same as God?’, his answer would be: ‘Yes an^No’.
That is to say, they are, in his own words, ‘He/not He’ (Huwa Id huwa); 23 or
equally, one could say: ‘they are not Him, and they are not other than Him’ (Ld
hiya huwa wa la hiya ghayruh ). 24 For if we say ‘Yes’ (alone), then this would
require us confining Allah, the most Exalted, in objects, which is an obvious
misconception. And if we say ‘No’ (alone), then this would require the assertion
of other separate and self-subsistent) existents, and this - for Ibn ‘Arabi - is also
wrong. So the ultimate truth requires combining both ontological views and
saying that the things are in essence ‘not other than Allah’ - although in the
forms that we see, they also are not (identical with) Allah. These forms do not
have real independent existence, since otherwise Allah would not be ‘the One
(alone)’ (al-wahid) - but He is the One (alone), and the created things exist by
and through Him, not by themselves. For Ibn ‘Arabi, this is in fact ‘the secret of
sincerity’ (sirr al-ikhlds), which is also ‘the secret of destiny’ (sirr al-qadar) that
makes clear the fundamental distinction between the Creator and the creation,
the Eternal and the created - and this secret, he explains, has been hidden from
most people [III.182.il].
Chittick goes on to show that, for Ibn ‘Arabi, everything in the world is a
divine name of Allah (SDK: 94); or rather, the things are the manifestations of
the Names. From the general Qur’anic verse O people, you are truly in need of
134 Unicity and multiplicity
Allah (35:15), Ibn ‘Arab! easily concludes that everything (that is a cause, and
everything is a cause) is a divine Name, because we are in need of these causes,
so they may not be other than Him [1.288.16], Again we can not say that these
secondary and intermediate causes ( asbab ) are Him - though in their most ulti-
mate essence and Source they are all one, and this one is not other than Him. But
of course someone simply hearing such an expression will initially think that
they mean that the particular shape or body of the created objects that are the
causes: that is why we can not simply stop at saying (as many later Sufi poets
sometimes did) that ‘all things are Allah’. Ibn ‘Arabi explained these key onto-
logical distinctions most clearly and extensively in his Fusus al-Hikam, espe-
cially in chapter 3 ‘on the wisdom of transcendence ( al-hikma al-subuhiyyd) in
the word of Noah’; 25 but he also took up this same subject at many places
throughout the Futiihat [1.90.17, and the extensive references cited in the previ-
ous paragraph].
In a similar manner, Ibn ‘Arabi often describes the world of all creation as a
kind of ‘mirror’ on which Allah’s Image is reflected [IV. 430.1]. If someone
looks at the world from the real side of actual existence, then he will see the
Image of the Real, Allah the most Glorious; but if he considers the world only
from the side of its non-existence (if we suppose this is possible), then he will
see an image of the unreal:
Therefore the reason why this (ontological) ‘isthmus’ ( al-barzakh ) - which
is the possible (realm of contingent existence) between (pure) non-existence
and Existence - is the occasion ( sabab ) for its being attributed both per-
manence and non-existence, is because it corresponds to both those things
by its essence. That is because the absolute non-existence stood up like a
mirror for the Absolute Existence, so the (divine) Existence saw His Image
in it, so that this Image is the essential reality ( ‘ayn) of the possible. That
is why this ‘possible’ (as the Perfect Human Being or First Intellect) had a
permanent individual-essence (‘ayn thdbita ) and state of (definable) ‘thing-
ness’ already in the state of its non-existence. And that is why it emerged
(in its contingent, created existence) according to the Image of the Absolute
Existence. This is also that is why it was also describable as non-finite, so it
is referred to as infinite.
But the Absolute Existence is also like a mirror for the absolute non-
existence. So the absolute non-existence saw itself in the mirror of the Real,
but the image that it saw was itself the essential reality (‘ayn) of non-
existence by which this possible (existence) is described. Therefore it is also
described as infinite, just as the absolute non-existence is infinite - hence
the possible is described as (inherently) non-existing (ma'diim). So it is like
the image that appears between the mirror and the person looking in the
mirror: that image is not that very person himself, but it is not other than
him. Likewise the possible, with respect to as its (very limited kind of) per-
manence, is not the very essence of the Real Himself; yet it is not other than
Him. Similarly, with respect to its (only relative) non-existence, it is not the
Unicity and multiplicity 135
same thing as of the (absolutely) impossible, yet it is not entirely other than
it. So it is as though it is something relative (depending on how it is
viewed).
[III.47.32]
He also says:
If the unreal (non-existence) had a tongue (to speak), it would tell you:
‘you are according to my image’, because it sees in you nothing but its own
shadow, just as the Existence has speech and has said: ‘you are (created)
according to My Image’ [ Kanz : 1141-1150, and 15129], because He saw in
you His own Image.
[IV. 154.23]
So the world may not have a constant real (self-subsistent) existence, because
only Allah may be described by that; and at the same time the world is not in
constant non-existence, or it would not be there at all. Instead it is perpetually
fluctuating, at every instant of creation, between existence and non-existence.
And in fact, Ibn ‘Arabi points out [11.303-304], this is the real meaning of the
Qur’anic symbols of the ‘daytime’ and the ‘night’: when the Universal Intellect
(Allah’s Messenger) faces the Real, this would be a kind of ‘night’ for us, but
when the Intellect/Messenger faces us - in each divine Act of creation - this is
our manifest day ( shahdda : what is ‘seen’ or manifest - see also the related dis-
cussions in sections 2.14 and 6.8 [Spreading the Shadows]). What makes sense
of this distinction, of course, is Ibn ‘Arabi’s assertion of the central cosmogonic
principle of perpetual re-creation, which we shall discuss next. From that per-
spective, the world is actually continually created ‘in series’, bit by bit, one
entity at a time; so no two entities may gain real existence at the same time,
because they gain their existence only through their constant re-creation by the
Real who is One.
For Ibn ‘Arabi, this rule or principle of serial creation and re-creation is in
fact a direct implication of the verse ‘ each day He is upon some task ’ (55:29); at
the same time, it is for him the actual underlying meaning of the familiar philo-
sophical maxim ‘from the one there might proceed only’, which we discussed in
section 5.2. We have seen, however, that for Ibn ‘Arabi this creative procedure
is not therefore imposed on the Real; rather, it remains His choice which He
makes when He creates the world.
We also must remember that this divine oneness manifest in the Act of crea-
tion that we can know and observe - which grounds our own experience of
reality and the cosmos - is clearly rooted in the Single Monad. Yet this Single
Monad (the First Intellect, ‘Muhammadan Reality’, etc.) is itself but one of an
unknown number of divinely ‘originated’ ( [ibda ) ‘Roaming Spirits’ (see section
1.4), so there is indeed some kind of (for us) further unknowable multiplicity on
this higher ontological level. However, it would appear that again we can apply
the same judgement to those Roaming Spirits, according to our own human
136 Unicity and multiplicity
logic, that they may not be ‘other than’ Allah, nor the same as Him (since He
originated them): so they also are in this ontological status of ‘He/not He’, which
again indicates an ultimate Oneness on the highest divine level.
We have actually already summarized the basic themes of this section right at
the end of section 2.1, when we recalled Ibn ‘Arabi’s conclusion that ‘time is
defined by motion, and motion is defined by the different positions of the forma-
ble monads, and those monads are different states (times or instances) or forms
of the Single Monad, that alone has a real existence’. Therefore, ‘there is no god
but Allah’ and this highest created entity (i.e. ‘the Single Monad’) is the (all-
encompassing) Messenger of Allah. Allah sent this Messenger ‘to take us (and
the whole created world) from the darkness ’ of non-existence "into the light ’ of
existence (Qur’an 57:9). But although this Single Monad is not Allah, he is not
other than Allah: he is some sort of fundamental manifestation of Allah, and it is
through this primordial manifestation that Allah can accurately and meaningfully
be described, in the famous Qur’anic expression, as ‘ the First and the Last, the
Manifest and the Hidden ’ (57:3).
5.6 The principle of ever-renewed creation
Ibn ‘Arabi’s conception of time is profoundly rooted in one of the most famous
and distinctive - and uniquely and problematically experiential - features of his
world-view, the principle of the ‘ever-renewed creation’ of all the manifest
worlds at every instant. Thus he affirms, in a more abstract statement of this per-
ception:
There is no doubt that the ‘accidents’ [i.e. the particular forms taken by cre-
ation in all the different levels of existence at each moment] become non-
existent in the second instant-of-time after the instant of their coming into
existence. So the Real is continuously watching over the world of bodies
and the higher and lower (spiritual and imaginal) substances, such that
whenever a (particular) form through which they exist becomes nonexistent,
He creates at that same instant another form like it or opposed to it, which
(new creation) preserves it from non-existence at every instant. So He is
continuously creating, and the world is continuously in need of Him.
[11.208.27]
He also makes it clear that this continuously renewed ‘return to non-existence’ is
an intrinsic condition of all the created forms, and not due to any external force
[II. 385. 4], Typically Ibn ‘Arabi relates this fundamental insight to the Qur’anic
verse: ‘ but they are unaware of the new creation (khalq jadidf (50:15), which
he frequently quotes 26 - along with the famous verse concerning the ‘Day of the
divine Task’ (55:29) that he cites in relation to his intimately related concept of
the quantization of time.
Therefore the existence of things in the world is not continuous, as we
imagine and observe, because Allah is continuously and perpetually creating
Unicity and multiplicity 137
every thing whatsoever - at every level and domain of existence - at every
instant, or in every single ‘Day of event’ [11.454.21, 11.384.30]. This means that,
just as time (for Ibn ‘Arabi) may exist only at one atomic instant at a time, so
also space (and whatever it may contain) also exists only one instant at a time. In
fact there is no difference between space and time: they are both containers for
events (see section 2.1 and 3.6).
We have already seen in previous chapters that, according to this principle of
ever-renewed creation, Ibn ‘Arabi explains motion (section 2.6) in a new unique
and unprecedented manner, and he also explains the ‘intertwining’ of days
(section 4.4) as well as some other related philosophical and theological con-
cepts. Indeed this hypothetical (though Ibn ‘Arabi affirmed it through unveiling)
principle forms the basis of Ibn ‘Arabi’s overall view of the world, and we shall
use it as one of three key hypotheses in the following chapter in which we
explain his Single Monad model of the cosmos.
Of course this re-creation must be happening at extraordinarily high ‘rates of
refreshment’, but Ibn ‘Arab! has no difficulty in finding scriptural allusions and
theological and other arguments supporting this distinctive conception, in addi-
tion to the direct experiential evidence of the spiritual ‘knowers’ (‘ urafa ’). He
says:
The form becomes non-existent in the next instant-of-time after the time of
its coming into existence, so the Real is always Creator, and the monad (sub-
stance, jawhar) is always in need (of the Creator for its existence). For if the
fonn would remain (for two instants of time or longer), those two princi-
ples would not hold. But this is impossible [at least theologically speaking,
since otherwise the creatures would be independent of Allah, whereas only
Allah maybe described as (completely) Self-sufficient ( al-Ghani ), while
everything created has the essential intrinsic quality of ontological ‘poverty’
ifaqr) or need of the Creator for its very existence], so it is impossible for
the (created) form to remain for two instants of time (or longer).
{Al-Tanazzulat Al-Layliyya: 55)
So from the theological point of view, neither the forms nor the essences of the
created world may remain (constant) for more than one moment because if they
do they would be independent of the Creator - whereas both the essence and the
‘accidents’ or form of the creatures are always in need of their Creator. The
essence needs ever-renewed forms because it exists only when it wears a form;
and the form does not stay the same, because, if it did so, the Real would not be
Perpetually-Creating ( Khallaq ), and the individual form would be at least partly
independent of the Real.
In addition, Ibn ‘Arabi argues in similar theological terms that there are never
any two truly identical forms, since otherwise Allah will not be described as ‘the
Infinitely Vast’ ( al-Wasi‘ ). But because of this unique divine Vastness ( al-ittisa
al-ilahf) [1.266.8], the monad will never wear two identical forms: i.e. it never
wears exactly the same form for more than one instant; nothing is ever truly
138 Unicity and multiplicity
repeated [1.721.22], The new forms, he admits, are often ‘similar’ to the previ-
ous ones but they are not the ‘same’ [11.372.21, 111.127.24]. Ibn ‘Arab! summa-
rized this argument as follows:
The world at every instant of time ( zaman fard) is re-formed ( takawwun )
and disintegrated. So the individual entity of the substance of the world
( ‘ayn jawhar al- ‘alam) has no persistence (in existence) except through its
receiving of this formation ( takwin ) within it. Therefore the world is in a
state of needfulness perpetually: either the forms are in need (of a creator)
to bring them forth from non-existence into existence; or else the substance
[ jawhar. i.e. the substrate for the created ‘forms’ or ‘accidents’] is in need to
preserve its existence, because unavoidably a condition for its existence is
the existence of the formation of those (newly re-created forms) for which it
is a substrate.
[11.454.19]
Elsewhere Ibn ‘Arabi gives a very short statement of this general ontological
argument which is rather difficult to follow. There he says:
The doer ( al-fail) may not do nothing (although we use this expression
widely in our daily language, but it is logical nonsense to say ‘do nothing’),
and the thing may not become non-existent (simply) by its opposite, because
(the thing and its opposite) may not meet, and (also) because the opposite
does not exist (at that same time) ... So that is why we said that (the form)
becomes non-existent by itself (not through an external force or action) and
is impossible to remain (in existence for two moments or longer).
(Al-Tanazzulat Al-Layliyya: 55, see also 1.39.8)
Ibn ‘Arabi also made the same basic arguments near the beginning of the
Futuhat, through the tongue of a mysterious ‘western Imam’ who summarizes in
an extremely condensed form - usually using rhymed prose and the language
and terminology of kalam theology - a series of challenging ontological
premises subscribed to by those who have moved beyond the simple creed of the
common believers, which forms the second of the four levels of faith that Ibn
‘Arabi explained at the beginning of the Futuhat, and the mysterious speaker’s
remarks in this section are roughly based on al-Ghazali’s intentionally popular
kalam treatise Al-Iqtisad fi Al-Ftiqad:
(4) Then he said: ‘Whatever individual entity (is said to) appear, but which
does not give rise to any (distinctive) quality, then its existence is obviously
impossible, since it does not give rise to any knowledge (as would be the
case with anything that actually exists).’
(5) Then he said: ‘And it is impossible for it to fill different places,
because its travelling (from one place to another) would be in the second
instant of time of the time of its existence in itself, but it does not continue
Unicity and multiplicity 139
to reside (over two instants). And if it were possible for it to move by itself,
then it would be self-subsistent and would have no need of place. Nor does
(the advent of) its opposite make it cease to exist, because it (the opposite)
does not exist (at the same time in the same place). Nor does (another) doer
(‘make it into nothing’), because although people do use the expression
‘doing nothing’, no intelligent person maintains that (is possible).
[1.39.7]
These statements are based on two issues: (1) the forms in the worlds of mani-
festation may not remain longer than a single instant of time, since otherwise
they would be independent and self-subsistent; and (2) the created forms intrin-
sically return to non-existence after every instant. Otherwise they would either
be brought into non-existence by the existence of their opposite (which can not
exist at the same time and place, and therefore itself has to be newly created), or
by another doer who ‘makes them non-existent’, which is also not logical,
because it is nonsense to take literally the expression ‘do nothing’, where the
result of an action is pure non-existence.
Something verbally resembling this notion of the ‘re-creation’ or the perpet-
ual ‘recurrence of creation’ had earlier been employed by the kalam scholars
(MacEy 1994: 47, MacDonald 1927: 326-344) and particularly the Ash‘arites
who, like Ibn ‘Arab!, maintained that the world is composed of substances and
accidents (Corbin 1969: 203, Wolfson 1976: 466-517), or monads (substances:
jawhar ) and their forms or ‘accidents’ (‘ arad ). Ibn ‘Arabi acknowledged their
contribution - and certainly borrowed much of their theological language, giving
it his own distinctive meanings - but he also took it a very important step further
by saying that even those existing monads are only copies or reflections of the
Single Monad or Substance that alone has a real existence [III.404.25, Al-
Masa’il : 32]. Therefore, all the forms and monads in all the worlds are continu-
ously and perpetually created and re-created by this Single Monad.
Understanding the world therefore requires us to explain and understand how
this Single Monad creates the monads and the forms, or in other words how to
link the unique oneness of the Creator and the observable multiplicity of the
world.
We shall also see in section 7.6 that with the re-creation principle one can
easily resolve the standard EPR criticism of the (apparent) inconsistency
between Quantum Theory and the theory of Relativity, which arises from our
inadequate understanding of the nature of time.
6 The Single Monad model of the
cosmos
The cosmos is only imagined, though it is - in reality - real.
And the only one who understands this fact has surely accomplished all the
secrets of the path.
( Fusus : 157)
The knowings of the Real are not hidden from anyone,
except for someone who does not know the One/one . 1
[IV. 181.31]
For Ibn ‘Arabi, a true understanding of time is the key to realizing and under-
standing the origin and structure of the world, by providing the link between its
ultimate unity and apparent multiplicity. In this chapter we shall outline an inte-
grated cosmological model based on Ibn ‘Arabi' s view of the oneness of being
explained in Chapter 5, together with his understanding of the flow of time as
explained in Chapter 4 and his unique view of creation in the Week as explained
in Chapter 3. We shall call this model the ‘Single Monad model’. Under this
model, Ibn ‘Arabi views the entire created world, both spiritual and manifest, as
imaginal forms perpetually re-created by the Single Monad ( al-jawhar al-fard)
( Al-Mujam Al-Sufi : 297), which alone has real existence. This Monad continu-
ously and perpetually appears in different forms creating the phenomena of the
visible and invisible worlds.
6.1 The three hypotheses
The Single Monad model can be summarized in the following three hypotheses
- although, to be sure, Ibn ‘Arabi himself presents these concepts primarily not
as the subjects of philosophical or theological arguments, but rather as the sym-
bolic expression of the actual metaphysical realities directly perceived by
himself and many other realized ‘Knowers’ ( ‘urafa ’, muhaqqiqun, ahl Allah and
so on) through the processes of inspired ‘unveiling’
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 141
6.1.1 The Single Monad
There is only one Single Monad that can be said to have a real existence at any
given time. This Monad creates other monads by manifesting different forms
(‘imaging Itself) to make a comprehensive ‘still picture’ of the entire cosmos.
This still picture is created in one full Week of the original creative Days (of
events), but this creative process is equivalent only to one single moment (the
‘atom of time’) for an observer inside the cosmos. Thus the observed cosmos is
the eternally renewed succession of these still pictures made up by the Single
Monad. The Monad - discussed in detail in the following sections - is an indi-
visible reality, but it is still itself a compound made up by the ‘Greatest Element’
that is the only real ultimate substance in existence.
6.1.2 The re-creation principle
The forms of manifestation cease to exist intrinsically right after the instant of
their creation, and then they are re-created again by the Single Monad in every
original creative ‘Week’ (i.e. at every moment). As discussed in sections 3.6 and
5.6, this perpetual re-creation happens in the ‘six Days’ of creation from Sunday
to Friday, which accounts for the three dimensions of space. But we do not
witness this creation process as such; instead we witness only the created world
on the ‘last Day’ of Saturday. So the seven Days of the divine Week are in all
one point of space-time (Days 6 to 1) which then - by repeating manifestations -
manifests the space-time container (i.e. ‘the Age’, as discussed in section 2.19)
which encompasses the world both spatially and temporally.
6.1.3 The actual flow of time
Since the world takes seven Days to be created by the Single Monad, which
manifests the forms of the monads one by one in specific order, any observer
would have to wait - somehow out of existence - six Days (from Sunday to
Friday) in order to witness the next moment of creation (i.e. the next ‘still
picture’) on the following Saturday. But of course we do not perceive all this,
but rather experience it as a single infinitesimal moment. In each Day of these
Days of creation, a corresponding dimension of the world is created. Therefore,
the real flow of the actual created time does not go linearly, but rather is inter-
twined with the observable, normal earthly days in the special - and admittedly
rather mystifying - manner that we have summarized in section 4.4, along with
Ibn ‘Arabi’s account of the way in which the observable earthly daytimes and
nights are ‘taken out’ of each other and separated by three daytimes and three
nights in order to form the three-dimensional space that we experience.
6.2 The Single Monad
Borrowing his language from the atomist physical theories of earlier kalam theol-
ogy, Ibn ‘Arabi sometimes refers to the created world as being made up of
142 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
monads and forms, or in his technical language, of ‘substances’ (jawahir, s.
jawhar ) and various changing ‘accidents’ ( a'rdd , s. ‘arad) that inhere in and
qualify those substances. In the process of manifestation, the substances appear to
remain relatively constant, while the accidents do not stay for more than one
moment. In this terminology, the ‘monad’ or substance ( al-jawhar ) is - as will be
discussed shortly - a physical or metaphysical entity that exists by itself, whereas
the ‘form’ or accident ( al - ‘arad) exists only through or by some particular monad.
The monad, however, may appear in existence only by ‘wearing’ some form or
another [11.179.26], so we do not see the monads but rather only the forms. Also
Ibn ‘Arabi asserts that the monad exists by itself and its existence is constant and
invariable, while the form exists only in the monad and its existence is temporal;
it exists only at the time and then it vanishes instantly and intrinsically, and the
same never comes back to existence again [11.677.30, III.452.24],
Generally jawhar signifies everything that exists in reality. Literally it origi-
nally meant ‘jewel’, but, in this technical sense borrowed from the physical
theory of kalam theology, it means ‘substance’. In a very different philosophical
context, the same Arabic word was used to translate the first of the ten Aristote-
lian categories already discussed in section 2.1. In English, the word ‘monad’ -
which we will regularly use here for jawhar - is derived from the Greek
monados, and it means ‘ultimate, indivisible unit’. It was used very early by the
Greek philosophers of the doctrines of Pythagoras, and it was also used later, in
a very different way, by the Neoplatonists to signify the One: thus God is
described as the ‘Monad of monads’. 2
Like the Neoplatonists, Ibn ‘Arabi sometimes uses the term al-jawhar
(monad) in this higher theological sense to refer to ‘the one’, ‘the essence’, ‘the
real’ (not ‘the Real’ as a divine Name of God, but ‘the real-through-whom-
creation-takes-place’, as discussed further below) and the origin of everything in
the world. However, in such cases he does not seem to refer directly to the
highest, transcendent dimension of ‘God’, but rather to the ‘Universal/First Intel-
lect’ or the ‘Pen’ [II. 675. 6], who is also the ‘Perfect Human Being’.
On the other hand, although in this theological or cosmological sense the term
al-jawhar ordinarily refers to the one real essence of the world (of all creation),
Ibn ‘Arabi also sometimes uses the same term in the plural form (jawahir) to
refer to the essences or souls/ spirits (al-nufus al-natiqa) - or more precisely, to
the ‘partial intellects’ (al-‘uqul al-juz’iyya, in contrast with the Universal Intel-
lect, al-‘aql al-kulli, that is their origin) - of human beings who are the perceiv-
ers of the world. Even more generally, he sometimes uses it to refer to any entity
(even inanimate ones) in the creation, whether angels, jinn, humans, animals,
plants or metals. In this latter more generic sense he considers that everything in
creation has a substance which is its monad (jawhar) and a particular form
( ‘arad) which is its appearance.
These very different dimensions and usages of the term ‘ monad '/jawhar,
however, are also intrinsically linked in Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmology, since he argues
that all the monads of the world are created by, and are therefore the ‘images’
(reflections, shadows etc.) of the one Single Monad. Thus in that larger perspec-
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 143
tive of creation, they are nothing but different images of this one Single Monad
that in reality may alone be described as having real existence [III.452.24].
6.3 The different names of the Single Monad
As we mentioned above, this Single Monad ( al-jawhar al-fard) is the Universal
Intellect itself and also the Pen. It also has different names or descriptions as Ibn
‘Arabi summarized in his book Al-Durrat Al-Bayda ( The White Pearl) in which
he discussed many names and descriptions of the First Intellect and the title of
the book itself is one interesting variant. Also Ibn ‘Arabi spent much of the first
chapter in his book Al-Tadbirat Al-Ilahiyya on explaining the different names
and properties of this Universal Intellect that is the true Caliph (Khalifa). There
is, however, some confusion between the Greatest Element that we shall talk
about shortly and the Single Monad; sometimes it is not very clear for some of
these many variant names whether they are really for the Single Monad or the
Greatest Element.
One of these names is ‘the real through whom creation takes place’ and
William Chittick devoted a full section in SPK to talk about it ( SPK : 132). This
real-through-whom-creation-takes-place is the most perfect image of the Real
Allah, the Creator of the world. That is why he is also called ‘the Perfect Eluman
Being’. We do not want to repeat here what Chittick said in SPK, but we just
want to stress that we should not mix the Real and the real-through-whom-
creation-takes-place because they may be confused in Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings. In
this book ‘the Real’, with capital, is used for the divine Name of Allah ( al-haqq ),
while ‘the real’, with small letter, is used for the real-through-whom-creation-
takes-place. But this name actually describes the Greatest Element rather than
the Single Monad, because the latter is compound while the Greatest Element is
the most elementary ‘block’ in the world as we shall see shortly. Everything in
the Creation at the end is rooted in the real, just as the leaves (and the fruits etc.)
of a tree are rooted in the stalk. The leaves were also ‘determined’ in the seed
that gave this tree even before it was planted. So the Single Monad is like the
seed for the tree of the cosmos , 3 while the real-through-whom-creation-takes-
place (i.e. the Greatest Element) is what makes up the seed down to the cells,
atoms and subatomic particles inside it.
In chapter 364 of the Futuhat Ibn ‘Arabi talks about how the entities heard
the divine Command in their state of pre-existence and he affirms again what we
have mentioned in section 2.3 that for Allah nothing was introduced after Elis
creating the world; only the world moved from determination into existence and
from immutable hearing (sam thubuti ) into actual hearing (sam wujudi). But
most importantly, he shows in the following passage that there is in fact only
one single entity that has a necessary immutable essence and that is the Perfect
Human Being:
For Allah everything of His servants is still with Him in effect (bil-fiT),
nothing is with Him in reality (bil-quwwa). So the divine designation came
144 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
to him (the servant) with regard to the acts and the states that Allah has with
him so that he shall remember with his intelligence what he has already wit-
nessed of his Lord when he was still non-existing - since he had the immu-
tability which made him accept the divine disposition in him, and this state
of immutability made him obey the Real’s Command regarding the exist-
ence because the Command may come only on that who is described by
hearing.
So the divine Saying (Command) is still (as It is) and the immutable
hearing is still (as it was), but what occurred is only the actual hearing that
is like a branch of the immutable hearing. So the state changed on the
essence of hearing but the (essence of) hearing did not change, because the
essences do not change from one state to another, but the states give them
rules so they wear them. But that who has no knowledge imagines that the
essence changed. But (the fact is that) the states seek the divine Names and
not that the essences are described by seeking. And the essences gain names
and descriptions according to the rules of (those) states that change over
them. And without the states, the essences would not be distinguished
because (in reality) there is only one essence that was distinguished with its
entity from the Necessarily Existent ( wajib al-wujud) just as it was described
like Him with necessary immutability. So He, the Exalted, has the Neces-
sary Existence and Immutability, and to this essence (only) the necessary
immutability. So the states for this essence are like the divine Names for the
Real. So just as the Names of the Essence do not multiply the Named nor
make Him many, so the states for this essence do not make him multiple or
many, despite the rationality of the multiplicity and manyness of the Names
and the states. And by this (similarity) it was true for this essence to be
described as being on the (divine) Image.
[III. 313. 35-314. 10]
Therefore, in reality, there is only this entity that is the essence of the Perfect
Human Being, and the world is the different states of this single entity. As we
mentioned at the begimiing of this chapter (and also in section 2.1 when we
introduced Ibn ‘Arabi's view of time, and also at the end of section 5.5 when we
discussed the oneness of being), this single entity is the Single Monad, and the
essences (i.e. the monads) of the world are different reflections of this Single
Monad.
Another important name of the Single Monad is the Universal Spirit ( al-ruh
al-kullt), and Ibn ‘Arabi shows that he deserves this name because he goes (v.
raha, yaruh ) in the states of the world:
And this name is to him from two aspects: the first is for his being a spirit,
i.e. in ease, happiness and rest ( raha p.p. of yastarih; to rest or to relieve)
owing to his knowledge of his Lord and his witnessing Him. And the second
is that he went (raha past tense of yaruh\ to go) through the capacious orbs
of the knowledge of his Creator, by a special force. And he went through the
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 145
states of the cosmos to give out to them what Allah entrusted him. And he
went through his knowing himself by his need to his Lord and his Creator.
So he has three goings ( rawahat ), 4 so he may be called ‘Universal ( kulli )’
Spirit because there is no fourth state other than those to go through. So it is
like the imperative (tense) of ‘raha’ (^' j: went), ‘ yaruhu ’ (c’/jls: the past
participle, to go) and the imperative is ‘ ruh ’ (c’j- go!); and when it was
transformed from the imperative to the noun, the ‘wow' was returned to it as
also the ‘ alif and ‘ lam ’ (the definitive article) was added, because the omit-
ting of ‘wow’ from it was due to the meeting of the two consonants. 5 So it is
like: he was sought from one direction then it is said that he has gone (raha),
as we said.
(Al-Dwrat Al-Bavda’\ 135)
Yet another interesting name of this Single Monad is ‘Everything (kulla shayfl 6
This name is interesting because Ibn ‘Arab! says in Al-Masail that ‘in every-
thing there is everything (kulla shay’in jihi kullu shay’), even if you do not rec-
ognize that’ [Al-Masa’il: 58], This is on the one hand another expression of his
Single Monad theory because it renders into: ‘the Single Monad is in every-
thing’. But also it might mean that the internal structure of the Single Monad is
as complicated as the world itself because it means: ‘in everything (even the
Single Monad) there is everything (even the world)!’ This last statement is plau-
sible since both the Single Monad (i.e. the Perfect Human Being) and the world
are on the divine Image as we have seen before (section 3.2). This reminds us in
mathematics with fractals such as the Mandelbrot set, Julia set and Sierpinski
triangle, where the structure keeps repeating itself on any larger or smaller scale
(Mandelbrot and Frame 2002: 37, Stewart et al. 2004: 60). This deserves a sepa-
rate study, but we just want to mention here that this might answer the question
we put forward in section 2.16 about the structure of the moment and whether it
is divided into sub-moments. We said there that the moment could be indeed
identical to the day where the Sun rises, moves gradually in the sky and then sets
to rise again on the next day; as the Single Monad might be identical with the
world, the moment might be identical with the day. It just depends on the scale
we are using; if we were inside the Single Monad we might see creations such as
the Sun, planets and the stars, but because we are outside we see it as a point.
Also if we suppose we go outside the world, we shall see it as a point; that is - as
the Single Monad - indivisible but compound. This also has its example in
modern cosmology as the black hole which occupies a single point in our space
but itself is considered a complete world. 7
6.4 The structure of the monad
At the beginning of the first chapter of Al-Tadbirat Al-Ilahiyya, lbn ‘Arabi says:
‘The first existent originated by Allah is a simple spiritual Single Monad,
embodied according to some doctrines and not-embodied according to others’
(Tadbirat: 87).
146 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
As this remark indicates, Ibn ‘Arabi was well aware that there has long been
a debate amongst philosophers whether the monad is a physical or metaphysical
entity, or whether it is embodied or not [see also 1.47.22], Although he mostly
prefers the second choice ( Al-Durrat Al-Baydd’\ 134), Ibn ‘Arabi sometimes
does not rule out either case, perhaps because the argument should be meaning-
less - i.e. the reality must necessarily encompass all manifestations of creation,
both spiritual and manifest - if we recall that there is in reality only one Single
Monad. Many times, though, he affirms that the Single Monad is embodied and
indivisible, especially when the manifest world is concerned [11.438.2], On the
other hand, the essences of the spirits and souls are not likely to be embodied
[11.309.25], though both (the manifest and spiritual) are only reflections of the
Single Monad that itself can be described neither as (solely) physical nor as met-
aphysical, because it is necessarily the whole of creation. In the very long
chapter 198 of the Futuhat, in which Ibn ‘Arabi talks in detail about the various
aspects of divine creation, he summarizes the various divisions or types of physi-
cal and metaphysical entities. He also states the difference between the essences
(monads) and their accidents (forms). This is shown in the following long
passage in which Ibn ‘Arabi also shows the basis of the Single Monad model,
while pointing out the difference between the approaches of the Sufis and of the
philosophers that we discussed at the beginning of Chapter 5. There he says:
Now you must know that every knowable thing that may be classified must
unavoidably enter into (the category of) what exists in thought ( wujud
dhihni). But this thing that exists in thought may belong either to what
can receive real existence (wujud ‘ayni)\ or to what may not receive real
existence, like the things that are impossible ( al-muhal ). And that which
can receive real existence either subsists by itself, which is called ‘not-in-
a-substrate’ ( la-fi-mawdu ) or else it does not (subsist by itself). And that
which subsists by itself is either embodied (or more strictly speaking, ‘local-
ized in a place’, mutahayyiz ), or not embodied.
As for that (self-subsistent reality) which is classified as not-in-a-
substrate and not embodied, it must necessarily be either what necessarily
exists by its own essence (wajib al-wujud li-dhatihi), and He is Allah the
Exalted; or what necessarily exists through (the determination by) something
other than itself, and that is what is contingent (al-mumkin: i.e. the whole
created world). And this (category of what is) contingent is either embodied
(in-a-place), or not embodied. As for the division among the contingent
things of what is self-subsistent, that is either not embodied - like the rational
souls (al-nufus al-natiqa al-mudabbira) that govern the substance of the
(spiritual) world of Light, the natural world, and the elemental world, or else
(the self-subsistent contingent things) that are embodied are either compound
with parts, or without parts. So if it has no parts, it is the (simplest) ‘Single
Monad’; 8 and, if it has parts, it is a (natural, elemental) body (jism).
As for the category (of knowable things) that are in a substrate which are
not self-subsistent and embodied - except by way of being dependent (on
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 147
their substrate), members of this category are either necessary concomitants
of their substrate, or they are not (necessary concomitants). Or rather, that is
how it seems to ordinary vision, since in the fact of the matter nothing that
does not subsist by itself (i.e. everything but the Creator) actually continues
(in existence) for more than the instant of its existence; it may either be fol-
lowed by (new creations that are) similar ( amthal ), or by that which is not
similar to it. As for what is followed by (new creations that are) similar, that
is what are imagined to be the ‘necessary concomitants’ of a thing, like the
yellowness of gold or the blackness of ebony. As for (those characteristics)
which are not followed by similars, they are called ‘accidents’ ( al-'ardd ),
while the necessary concomitant is called an (inherent) attribute (si fa).
So the knowable things that have actual existence are not more than those
we have mentioned.
Now you must know that the world is one in substance and many in form
(appearance). So since it is one in substance, it does not transmute (from
one thing into another entirely different one: la yastahil). And also the form
itself is not transmuted, since otherwise this would lead to ‘reversing the
realities’ (qalb al-haqa’iq) - for heat may not (at the same time) be cold-
ness, dryness may not be wetness, whiteness may not be blackness, and the
triangle may not be square. But something that is hot can come to exist as
cold, though not at the same time when it is hot; and also what is cold can
come to exist as hot, but not in the same time when it is cold. Likewise what
is white may become black, and the triangle may become a square.
So there is no transmutation (la istihala), but the earth, water, air, the
(celestial) orbs (al-aflak) and all the generated existents (of the sublunar
world: al-muwalladat) are (only) forms in the (Single) Monad. So (certain)
fonns are bestowed upon it and that (process of bestowing forms) is called,
with respect to their specific shape (hay ’a) ‘generation’ (kawn). Or (certain)
forms are taken off of so that a (particular) name (i.e. attribute or property)
is removed, and that is (called) ‘corruption’ (fasad ). So in fact there is no
transmutation, in the sense that the actual entity of a thing changes into
another (entirely different) actual entity, but it is only (by an entirely new
re-creation) as we have explained.
So the world is continually being generated and corrupted (destroyed) at
every single instant of time (zaman fard). And there would be no persist-
ence for the actual entity of the substance (Monad) of the world, were it not
for its receptivity to this ‘creative formation’ (takwin) in itself. So the world
is always continually in need (faqr. of the divine creative force). As for the
forms, they are in need (of Allah’s creation) in order to come out from non-
existence into existence. And as for the Monad, it (is in need) of preserving
its existence through that (creative Act), because its existence is unavoida-
bly conditioned upon the existence of the creative formation of that (i.e. the
infinite forms) for which it is a substrate.
Likewise (with the dependency on the Creator) of the (purely spiritual)
self-subsistent contingent (existent) that is not embodied: it is (still) the
148 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
substrate for the spiritual attributes and perceptions that it supports, so that
its own individual reality may not continue without them. But those spiritual
attributes and perceptions are continually renewed in that (spiritual existent)
just like the accidents (forms) are continually renewed in the bodies.
In the same way the contingent that exists by itself and is not embodied
is the substrate of what it carries of spiritual descriptions and perceptions
(that is the bearer of meanings) that its essence may not remain without
them. And they are renewed on it just like the renewal (i.e. re-creation) of
the forms in the bodies; the image of the body is a form in the monad but
the terms (hudud: by which the object is described) are related to the images
(of the body, not to the body itself). So the images are the ones which are
termed (mahduda), and one of these terms is the monad in which these
images appear. That is why they (the philosophers) call the images monad(s)
because they take the monad in the term of the image.
This is possibly the main barrier that prevents us from witnessing the
reality of the world; we always try to assign an image to every concept, and
then we discuss the terms of this image such as its shape, colour, size . . . etc.
The Single Monad, however, may not be captured into image, not to mention
the Real Himself. Therefore, approaching these matters in any way other than
the path of (experiential) divine unveiling will not lead one to the truth of the
matter as it really is. No wonder that they (those who rely on their own
unaided theorizing) never cease to be in disagreement (about this). That is
why the group of the blessed, who are supported by the Holy Spirit, turned to
purifying themselves from their own thinking, and to liberating themselves
from the bonds of their (natural, animal) forces, so that they became con-
nected with the Greatest Light and saw for themselves (the reality of) the
matter as it really is in itself! Because the Real - may He be cherished and
glorified - is their vision [ Kanz : 21327], so all what they see is the Real
(Chittick 2002: 1 16-124). As the righteous one (Abu Bakr al-Siddiq) said: T
have seen nothing but I have seen Allah before it.’ So he sees the Real, then
he sees His effect in the world; that is to witness how the world emerged as if
he witnessed the possible things in their determination state when (Allah)
threw what He has thrown on them from His greatest light so they became
described by existence after they were described by non-existence [Kanz:
548, 1314]. So this (person), who has got this state, the veil of blindness and
misleading has been removed for him: ‘now We removed thy veil, and sharp
is thy sight this day!’’ (50:22), ‘Lo! therein verily is a reminder for him who
hath a hearf (not only an intellect, see also section 5.1), ‘or gives an ear and
he is witnessing (the truthf (50:37). So (Allah) made knowledge available in
witnessing, because the judge judges based on his best guess while the
witness witnesses with knowledge not by guessing.
[11.454. 1]
According to this passage, Figure 6.1 summarizes the different types of things in
existence.
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 149
Figure 6. 1 Summary of the different types of knowable things.
Also in his Insha ’ al-Dawd ’ir ( Constructing the Circles), Ibn ‘ Arabi explains
the different categories or types of existence in the same way, which he repre-
sents schematically in Figure 6.2.
6.5 The greatest element
As we have seen above, although for Ibn ‘Arabi the monad or atom (Jawhar
fard) is an indivisible physical unit, it is understood to be composed of even
more elementary constituents. This means that there are smaller - but not neces-
sarily physical - ‘constituents’ that somehow underlie and help manifest the
atoms or monads, even though the monad itself is not physically divisible into
those metaphysical constituents, but can only exist in manifestation as a sub-
stance created through those underlying constituents. So what are these ultimate
constituents of the Single Monad?
In his book ‘Uqlat al-Mustawfiz ( The Bolt for the Restless), Ibn ‘Arabi speaks
about the ‘Greatest Element’ ( al - ‘unsitr al-dzam) from which Allah has created
the ‘Absolute Unseen’ which may not be disclosed to any creature, and he indi-
cates there that the creation or ‘origination’ of this Greatest Element is all at
once, without any intermediate or associated causes, as we have seen in section
2.16 (see also ‘Uqlat al-Mustawfiz : 38). So this original, metaphysical ‘Greatest
Element’ that is in some mysterious way the substrate of all subsequent manifest
creation - whether purely spiritual, imaginal or physical - is the only thing that
in some way underlies, constitutes, or gives rise to the physical monads. The
individual monad or atom, however, remains the basic indivisible structure in
the physically manifest world.
150 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
Figure 6.2 The Different Divisions of Existence (source: from Insha’ al-Dawa’ir,
page 19).
Note
The numbers 0 and 1 in the inside circle describe whether the corresponding division is localized (1)
or not localized (0); and (second number) whether it is self-subsistent (1) or not self-subsistent (0).
The spirit is self-subsistent but not localized, while colour is localized and not self-subsistent.
In the ‘Uqlat al-Mnstawfiz, Ibn ‘Arab! also mentions that there are 46,656,000
subtle luminous links ( raqa’iq nuraniyya ) between the First Intellect and the
Greatest Element that is their origin ( ‘Uqlat al-Mnstawfiz: 40). That number is in
fact the cubic power of 360 (360 3 = 46,656,000), which is no doubt symbolically
associated with the traditional division of the circle (and the divine year, see
section 3.2) into 360 degrees and the historical sexagenary system attributed to
the Babylonians (see also section 4.7).
Now the resulting relation between the manifest world, the Single Monad (First
Intellect) and the Greatest Element can be conceived by analogy to the relation
between a building, the bricks and the clay: i.e. the building is made up of similar
unit bricks, but the brick itself is made from fine clay. Ibn ‘Arab! also says:
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 151
the noble Greatest Element is in relation to the sphere of the world like the
(indivisible) point, and the Pen is like its circumference, while the Tablet
(i.e. the world-Soul) is what is in between (the point and the circumference).
So just as the point meets the circumference with its (whole) entity, so does
this Greatest Element meet with its (whole) entity all the aspects of the Intel-
lect, which are the subtle links (the 46,665,000 raqa’iq) that we mentioned
before. They are unique ‘one’ in the Greatest Element, but in the Intellect
they become multiple and manifold, because of the manifold receptivity (of
the Intellect for knowledge) from the Greatest Element. So there is (only)
one ‘close attention’ ( iltifata ) for the (Greatest) Element, but there are many
faces of receptivity for the Intellect, that is why this (Greatest) Element is
more realized in the unity of Its Creator. 9
Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that this Greatest Element is the most perfect thing in exist-
ence and that everything other than Allah (including, as we can see, the First
Intellect) is somehow derived from it. However, he does not give much informa-
tion about It, and he even says that he would explain the reality of this Element
if he was not sworn not to disclose it. However, does explain, as we have just
seen, that this Greatest Element has a special attention ( iltifata , like the divine
‘special Face’ discussed in section 5.2) to the metaphysical ‘world of writing
and recording’ ( ‘dlam al-tadwin wal-tastir), when the (manifest, including phys-
ical) world was still not yet existing in reality (but only in Allah’s foreknowl-
edge), and that Allah created the First Intellect (that is the Single Monad)
through this special attention ( ‘Uqlat al-Mustawfiz: 39).
In the summary cosmological chapter 60 of the Futuhat, Ibn ‘Arabi alludes
more symbolically, in a metaphysical exegesis of Qur’an 68:1 (‘ Nun and the
Pen, and what they are recording ...’), to the ‘Greatest Element’ when he
speaks of the mysterious figure of ‘ Nun ’ whom Allah appointed as the divine
‘chamberlain’ ( al-hajib ) and gave all His Knowledge of His creation, so that
Allah - with regard to His Name ‘the All-Knower’ - never hides from the Nun.
And Allah appointed another angel, the Pen - who is the Single Monad/First
Intellect/Perfect Human Being - as the ‘scribe’ for the Nun, ‘writing out’ all of
the divine Knowledge of His creation [1.294.33],
6.6 Analogies in the macrocosms
For Ibn ‘Arabi, of course, the mysterious metaphysical relations between the
ultimate macrocosmic constituents of creation are repeatedly mirrored in many
different ‘microcosmic’ dimensions of our own life. In each of these different
symbolic domains, the initial creation of this higher world and the relation
between its elements, such as the First Intellect and the Greatest Element, is sub-
sequently reflected on many different lower planes of existence.
152 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
6. 6. 1 The Black Stone and the Kaaba
The most visible example of Ibn ‘Arabi’s development of this cosmological
symbolism in the Futuhdt involves the Kaaba, the ‘house of Allah’ to which mil-
lions of Muslims now go on pilgrimage every year. For Ibn ‘Arabi, those circu-
mambulating the Kaaba are mirroring the circles of higher angels surrounding
the divine Throne [1.50.30], In that symbolic context, the angels also represent
the determining forces of the universal Nature ( Al-Durratu Al-Baydd’\ 138; we
shall come back to this later in section 7.10) and the four Archangels who carry
the Throne of Allah are the four main sustaining forces of that Nature.
This centrality of the symbolism of the Kaaba is of course rooted in the fact
that Ibn ‘Arabi started the first chapter of his Futuhdt by mentioning his encoun-
ter with the Spirit from whom he took all that he wrote in this book, a Spirit
whom he met while circumambulating the Kaaba. There Ibn ‘Arabi establishes a
symbolic correlation the seven circles of tawaf that the pilgrim is obliged to
perform around the Kaaba during the pilgrimage and the seven main divine
Names, in the manner already mentioned in Chapter 3: i.e. each one of these
seven Names is responsible for one specific Day of the divine Week of creation.
Then he says that his Lord told him: ‘the Kaaba, in relation to the all-encompass-
ing (divine) Throne, is like your heart with relation to your body’ [1.50.29], So
in fact the Kaaba on the Earth is symbolically like the Single Monad in the
cosmos. This analogy also applies to many related details, because the cubic
shape of the Kaaba is in fact the simplest structure which constitutes a body that
occupies the three spatial dimensions. As Ibn ‘Arabi mentioned [III. 276. 4; see
explanations in section 5.4 above], the body is composed of at least eight points,
corresponding to the comers of the cube.
But more importantly for Ibn ‘Arabi, one comer of the Kaaba holds the mys-
terious ‘Black Stone’ ( al-hajar al-aswad) which, according to tradition, the
angel Gabriel brought down from Paradise and gave to Abraham to put it in that
comer of the Kaaba. For Ibn ‘Arabi, this Black Stone symbolically represents
the foundational role in the process of creation or manifestation of the ‘Greatest
Element’. In other words, circumambulating the Kaaba starts from the south-
eastern corner in which this Black Stone resides, and the pilgrim is supposed to
make seven rounds (counterclockwise) around the Kaaba: this corresponds sym-
bolically to the way the Greatest Element first gives rise to or communicates to
the Single Monad or First Intellect, after which the Intellect brings forth the
world of manifest creation in the seven divine Days. According to tradition, the
Prophet Muhammad said that this Black Stone resembles ‘Allah’s right hand on
Earth’ \Kanz : 34729]. As is well known, Ibn ‘Arabi holds that the ‘Universal
Reality’ - which is also another name for the Greatest Element, because it is the
origin of the Single Monad [1.119.10] - is identical to the Spirit of Muhammad
himself, as that Spirit is also, according to a number of widely known hadith,
‘the first thing to be created’ \Kanr. 31917]. 10
Thus, at the very beginning of the opening chapter of the Futuhdt, when Ibn
‘Arabi begins to speak about the underlying metaphysical reality - i.e. the
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 153
‘Greatest Element’ and first creation - symbolized by the Black Stone that
resembles Allah’s right hand, he says in poetry:
People are ignorant of its Essence, so some say it is dense, while others say
it is subtle.
He (the Spirit) said to me, when I asked why they do not know It:
‘Only the noble may truly know (recognize) the noble! ’
[1.47.22]
Ibn ‘Arabi then proceeds in these opening pages to give many mysterious sym-
bolic details about what Allah creates in the Human Being (i.e. the Single Monad
or First Intellect) and in the world with each round of the seven circumambula-
tions around the Kaaba, and he relates that metaphysical teaching to the seven
main Attributes of Allah which are responsible for the seven Days of the divine
creative Week [1.49.32].
As shown in Figure 6.4, just the Greatest Element makes the Single Monad
which scans the states of the world in seven Days, the pilgrim in Hajj has to
make seven rounds around the Kaaba anti-clockwise. This circumambulation
starts from the eastern comer where the Black Stone resides and moves towards
the Shami comer. This clearly supports the analogy between the Greatest
Figure 6.3 The Kaaba, with people on the Hajj circumambulating it. The Black Stone
appears in the front comer, near the door.
154 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
Figure 6.4 How circumambulating the Kaaba is similar to the Greatest Element’s crea-
tion of the Single Monad. Circumabulation starts - anticlockwise - from the
eastern comer where the Black Stone is, and that comer is for the Pole.
Element and the mysterious Black Stone, especially, since we have said above
that the Black Stone resembles ‘Allah’s right Hand on Earth’ [Kanz: 34729].
6.6.2 The spiritual hierarchy
Another important example of the symbolic analogy between the metaphysical
process and figures of the ‘macrocosm’ and more human realities is the hierar-
chy of the spirits of the prophets and saints ( awliya ) - a central theme that runs
throughout the Futuhat. To summarize the cosmological aspect of that theme,
Ibn ‘Arabi presents the lower realms of the cosmos as being ruled by a complex
spiritual hierarchy - largely ‘invisible’ to most human beings, though not to the
spiritual ‘knowers’ - consisting, among others, of the spiritual ‘Pole’ ( al-qutb ),
the two Imams, the four Pillars ( awtdd ), the seven Substitutes ( abdal ), the eight
Nobles ( nujaba ’), the 12 Chiefs ( nuqaba ’), in addition to other lesser-known
groups. 11 Each of these groups and figures has a special corresponding spiritual
responsibility, some of which are have to do with maintaining the wider cosmic
order. Those pure spirits have also have an ongoing series of living human ‘rep-
resentatives’ or ‘agents’ (s. na’ib) amongst us [II. 6. 6].
Some of these members of the celestial spiritual hierarchy, as Ibn ‘Arabi
presents them in scattered passages of the Futuhat, are assigned cosmological
functions symbolically related, for example, to the 12 zodiacal signs, the seven
heavens, and the seven ‘climes’ or geographical regions, the four cardinal points,
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 155
or even the four comers of the Kaaba [11.13]. In particular, the highest level of
the ‘Pole’, in this hierarchy, is the figure who apparently corresponds to the lofty
metaphysical position of the Single Monad - which Ibn ‘Arabi often pointedly
refers to simply as ‘the Reality of Muhammad’ ( Al-Mu’jam Al-Sufi : 158).
6.6.3 The world of letters
Also yet another important symbolic analogy between the metaphysical macro-
cosm and more familiar human realities, which again runs throughout the
Futuhdt, is the ‘world of letters’. Ibn ‘Arabi considers the letters of the Arabic
alphabet - given their central place in the culminating divine revelation of the
Qur’an - to constitute in themselves ‘a real world like us’, since they are serv-
ants of Allah just like ourselves [1.58.13]. He begins his detailed explanation of
their symbolic metaphysical and cosmological functions in a long section in the
opening chapter of the Futuhdt. As he explains there, the Arabic letters also have
symbolic hierarchy similar to the spiritual hierarchy of the prophets and the
saints. Thus they also have Pole, which is the letter alif ('), the first letter of
Arabic alphabet; two imams (Leaders), which are the two other vowel letters
waw (j) and yd four awtad (Pillars), which are the letters alif ('), waw (j), yd ’
(ls) and nun (u), that together provide the essential Arabic grammatical indica-
tions ( ‘alamat al-Vrab)', and seven abddl (Substitutes), which are the letters alif
('), waw (j), yd ’ (l>), nun (u), and the three key pronoun markers ta ’ (^), kaf (^)
and ha’ (-»)] [1.78.18]. But the important facts about the metaphysical relations
between the world, the Single Monad and the Greatest Element are particularly
clearly developed in Ibn ‘Arabi’s teaching here regarding the metaphysical
dimension of this world of letters. Thus he clearly states that:
For the totality of the letters (like the world) may be deconstructed into the
alif (corresponding to the Pole and the Single Monad) and put together from
it (the letter or sound) alif but it can not be deconstructed into (any of) them.
However it too can be deconstructed - in our symbolic estimation - into its
spiritual principle ( ruhdniyya ), which is the (primordial) ‘Point’ (of Greatest
Element) - although (in fact) the one can not be (further) deconstructed. 12
[1.78.23]
Here again the ‘Greatest Element’ is assumed to be the underlying principle or
substrate of all creation and manifestation.
As we have mentioned on several earlier occasions, Ibn ‘Arabi often attributes
his source for some of the most important metaphysical knowledge about the
world to the spiritual Pole Idris (‘ mudawi al-kulum ’). In describing the relation
between the originary ‘Point’ of the ‘Greatest Element’ and all the manifest
cosmos, in chapter 15 of the Futuhdt , this Pole tells him:
The world (physical cosmos) exists between the circumference and the point
(of the Earth at its centre), arranged according to the levels (of its orbs) and
156
The Single Monad model of the cosmos
the smallness and greatness of the orbs. And (he said) that the sphere that is
closer to the circumference is wider than that which is inside, so its day is
longer, its space is larger, its tongue is more fluent and it is closer to real-
izing strength and purity. And what goes down to the (material, earthly)
elements is less than this (high) level, on down to the sphere of the Earth.
But each part in every circumference matches what is below it and what is
above it with its (whole) entity: no one is greater than the other, despite the
fact that one is larger and one is smaller! . . . And all match the point with
their entities - and that Point, despite its smallness, matches the parts of the
circumference with its (whole) essential reality ( ‘ayn).
[1.154.22]
It is worth mentioning here, as a modem analogy to this earlier symbolism, that
one of the most compelling consequences of Quantum Mechanics is that every-
thing in the physical world of ‘particles’ can also be expressed as waves that
have different wavelengths. Electrons for example - though they are particles -
have a wavelength. Even the Earth has a distinctive wavelength. When the mass
of the body or particle becomes larger its wavelength becomes smaller. So the
wavelength becomes even larger for massless particles such as photons (light).
6.6.4 The hierarchy of divine names
We have already discussed the unique Unity of Allah and the diversity of His
divine Names in section 5.3. In lbn ‘Arabi’s wider metaphysical perspective, the
divine Names - just like the spiritual world of the angels, prophets and saints -
are also arranged in a corresponding specific metaphysical hierarchy. In section
3.1, we have already encountered the four and seven fundamental divine Names
- which correspond to the four awtdd and the seven abdal respectively. But lbn
‘Arabi talks about this hierarchy of the divine Names in more detail early on in
chapter 4 of the Futuhat. Here we want only to draw the attention to his explana-
tion there of the difference between the two key divine Names ‘Allah’ and ‘the
All-Merciful’ ( al-Rahman ).
Already in his Al-Tadbirat Al-Ilahiyya, lbn ‘Arabi compares the relation
between those two Names with the cosmological or metaphysical relation
between the Throne and the Single Monad, as we explained in section 4.6 above
(see also Tadbirat : 89). Because the Single Monad is itself also called ‘the
Throne’, lbn ‘Arabi says that - in cosmological language - Allah mounted on
the Throne of the Single Monad, while ‘ the All-Merciful mounted on the Throne ’
(following the literal Qur’anic verses that we discussed earlier in section 1.4. So
the relation between these two Names is like the relation between the two divine
‘Thrones’. It is to be noted here that the Name ‘the All-Merciful’ is more specifi-
cally described by all the multiplicity of the divine Names, just like the Name
Allah. For as Allah said in the Qur’an: ‘'Call upon Allah or call upon the All-
Merciful, Whoever you call upon, to Him belong the most beautiful Names’
(17:1 10). So the Name Allah is also described by all the divine Names, but the
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 157
Name ‘the All-Merciful’ is closer to the multiplicity of the world through those
diverse divine Names. Likewise, the Throne that encompasses the heavens and
Earth is a place of manifest multiplicity, whereas the Single Monad, in its myste-
rious intrinsic ‘hiddenness’, is more described by the transcendent divine quali-
ties of unity and oneness.
6.7 Spreading the shadows
In discussing the divine Name ‘the Subtle’ ( al-latif), 13 Ibn ‘Arab! says that there
is great subtle knowledge in ‘the withdrawing of the shadow and its spreading’
(alluding to 25:45^-6), and that is why Allah made that symbolic image a guide
to Him [IV.238.2]. As we pointed out before, Ibn ‘Arabi views the world as a
structure made ‘according to the image or form’ of the Real (see section 3.1). In
the same way, he considers the manifest world as the ‘shadow’ of the Real, or of
the Universal Intellect (and ultimately the ‘Greatest Element’). He bases these
arguments on the following two verses from the Qur’an: ‘ Hast thou not seen
how thy Lord hath spread the shadow — and if He wished, He could have made it
still? Then We have made the Sun a guide unto it. Then We withdrew it into Us,
with a diminutive withdrawal ’ (25:45-46), and we have already drawn attention
to this basic relation between the divine Image and its ‘shadow’ in section 3.1. In
many places [III. 12.3, III. 106.7, III. 281. 32] Ibn ‘Arabi emphasizes that the
shadow of anything is on its own image; therefore:
Know that the Human Being ( Insan ), 14 since he is the ‘likeness’ of the
divine Form, is like the shadow of a person, which does not ever leave him,
although sometimes it appears to the senses and sometimes it is hidden. So
when the shadow is hidden, it is still implicit ( ma'quh ‘present- to-the-intel-
lect’) in that person; but when it is manifest, then it is visible to the eyesight
- (at least) for whoever (actually) sees it. So (likewise) the Perfect Human
Being ( al-insdn al-kamil) is implicit in the Real ( al-Haqq ), like the shadow
when it is hidden by direct sunlight so that it does not appear. For (the
Perfect) Human Being always continues to be, eternally and perpetually. That
is why (the Perfect Human Being) is always witnessed by the Real, since He
is described (in the Qur’an) as having Sight (al-basir. 17:1, 40:20, etc.).
Therefore when ‘ He spread His shadow ’, it appeared according to His
Form: ‘ Hast thou not seen how thy Lord hath spread the shadow — and if He
wished. He could have made it still?'’ (25:45) - i.e. stably remaining with
Whom is His shadow. But if He does not spread His Shadow, no individual
reality ( ‘ ayn ) of It will be manifest in sensible existence, except to Allah
alone (in His Foreknowledge). So His ‘Shadow’ (i.e. the Perfect Human
Being/Single Monad) has always been with Allah and will always be with
Allah, for he continues Allah’s continuing, while everything other than the
Perfect Human Being (Single Monad) only continues (in existence) through
Allah’s causing them to continue.
[III. 187. 15; see also 1.458.33 and 11.607.14]
158 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
Therefore, the Single Monad or Perfect Human Being is the primordial Shadow
of the Real, and the manifest world is in turn the shadow(s) of the Single Monad.
The world appears in existence, after being hidden in the ‘Unseen’ (of the divine
Foreknowledge), through Allah’s ‘spreading the shadow’ of the Single Monad in
the eternally renewed act of Creation. For if God so wished, He could have left
His Shadow unmanifest, which means that the created world would have stayed
as it was in Allah’s eternal Knowledge, instead of coming out into real existence
spread over space and time.
However, the ‘shadow’ of the Single Monad is one like him: that is why
Allah withdrew his shadow ‘with a diminutive withdrawal’ - like the withdrawal
of the shadow that normally occurs at sunset (see 1.459.5) - so that it disappears
in order to appear again in a different outward form, just as the sunlight disap-
pears in order to eventually make another day. So at every ‘Day’ (instant) the
Single Monad makes a new shadow in all creation. So the world is the ongoing
collection of those instantaneous shadows, as explained in sections 3.6 and 4.3.
When the shadow is spread (before and after noon) it is itself a guide to the
Sun, just as the Sun was an actual guide to it by its effect which caused the
shadow itself [1.459.9 and also IV 238.29]. Likewise our shadow-like existence
(our actual individual entity) should guide us to realize the Real manifested in
ourselves - being His shadows - by looking at His shadow (i.e. the Single
Monad or Perfect Human Being) who makes manifest the shadow of our crea-
tion - and by proceeding then from the Perfect Human Being to the Real
Himself, the divine ‘Light’ or Sun Who ultimately caused this shadow (that is
our existence). The seeker of the Real (murid), therefore, keeps seeking the Real
in these shadows and in the Shadow (of the Perfect Human Being) that is their
Source, until he comes to realize that Source more fully and directly. So when he
achieves that high state of realization, he himself - being one of these shadows -
will be extinguished or ‘drowned’ (n .fana ’) or united (n. ittihad) with the Real -
because the shadow can not see itself and the Real at the same time - except
perhaps for an instant of time, comparable to the case of noontime at the equator,
where the shadow of the object disappears for a single moment.
But Ibn ‘Arabi always clearly points out that after the ‘enlightened’ shadow-
subject witnesses the Real, and continues to watch Him, then he will realize that
he is as he was before and after his direct witnessing - except that before that
witnessing he did not realize that what he was witnessing was the Real - just as
the Sun is the Sun before and after the noontime disappearance of the shadow. 15
However, in fact the shadow at noon hides in the object and not in the Sun, so in
fact the realized knower indeed does not witness the Real Himself (the Essence),
but witnesses only the ‘real-through-whom-creation-takes-place’ (aThaqq al-
makhluq bihi), which is the Perfect Human Being (the Single Monad, or at most
the Greatest Element). So the Knower may at most realize his or her essential
unity with this reality, which is only the higher ‘Shadow’ of the Real.
It is here, Ibn ‘Arabi implies, that many of the Sufis’ ecstatic expressions (or
poetic metaphors) have sometimes been misunderstood. For example, Ibn al-
Farid in his famous poem, the Ta’iyya, speaks about ‘unification’ (ittihad) in
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 159
various forms (Mahmud 1995: 241, 248, 252 and 276). Of course Ibn ‘Arabi
himself has sometimes been accused of believing in ittihad and hulul, but he was
always very careful not to mention these words and directly denied such doctrines
[III. 298. 30, IV. 8 1.23]. 16 That is why in his prayers Ibn ‘Arabi asks to unite with
the Prophet Muhammad’s spiritual essence ( dhat ), who is the Perfect Human
Being. For example he says in his book of prayers, Al-Salawat AI-Faydiyya:
O God, pray for him (Prophet Muhammad) a prayer by which my branch
may connect with my root, and my part with my whole, until my essence is
unified with his essence and my attributes with his attributes, and the eye is
satisfied with the eye, and disunity flees away from disunity. 17
In yet another of his prayers, he very clearly expresses what we have just
observed in his remarks about the divine ‘shadow’:
Oh God, no god but You, it is You Whom we worship and You Whom we
witness; ever returning to You, nothing but You. I ask of You, by You, You
Yourself, Yourself, Yourself, You Who (have) no ‘he’ other than ‘Hu’ (the
divine Essence), (I ask of you) to withdraw from me the shadow of (my
natural bodily) formation, so that I may witness my (true) self bare from any
description that is a veil which prevents me from witnessing You as ‘I’, 18
and purify me from any attribute or influence that makes me see any (purely
personal) share (in existence): ‘for everything is perishable but its [or ‘His ']
face’ 19 (28:88), ‘ but to Allah all things are returned’’ (42:53). Oh my God,
pray for Your messenger, our master Muhammad, who is apportioned with
this perfect abolishment ( inahw ), and complete integration (jam') that is
beyond perfect wisdom. 20
For Ibn ‘Arabi, these symbolic analogies between the shadows and creation are
indeed very important existentially because Allah made them as guides for us, in
all the ways we have just reviewed. But what is particularly important here, in
terms of Ibn ‘Arabi’s actual cosmology and understanding of time, is that the
created entities of the world that are the evanescent ‘shadows’ of the Single
Monad are continuously re-created, by one instantaneous act of creation after
another, in a process similar to the spreading of the shadows by the Sun in the
course of the day. In the following section, we turn to some further illustrations
and implications of that cosmic process of creation.
6.8 Creation scenario: the world as a movie
Later Muslim writers, especially the great masters of mystical poetry in Persian
and other eastern Islamic languages, developed a great range of familiar
symbolic forms intended to elaborate and communicate the basic Qur’anic
imagery for the cosmological processes and their symbolic expression that we
have discovered in the writings of Ibn ‘Arabi. One of the most powerful and
160 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
multi-faceted of those images was Ibn ‘Arabi’s famous account - reminiscent of
the Sun-Line-Cave section of Plato’s Republic - of the universe as a vast
‘shadow-theatre’, a true ‘divine Comedy’ (Morris 1993: 50-69). Thus in con-
temporary terms, based on the concept of perpetual cosmic re-creation that we
have explained above, we may envisage the world as like a movie being dis-
played on a computer monitor. It is quite fascinating to discover that this analogy
is quite accurate in most of the details, even regarding what happens inside the
computer, since the Universal Intellect/Perfect Human Being/Pen can be consid-
ered as a kind of ‘supercomputer’ which creates, organizes the world and dis-
plays it in the ‘Universal Tablet’ (of the world-Soul). Ibn ‘Arabi has already
asserted that the world appears as ‘living, hearing, seeing, knowing, willing, able
and speaking’ with the same seven fundamental Attributes of the Real. This is
because the world is His divine work, and as Allah said: ‘Say: “everyone works
according to his own type’” (17:84) [11.438.19]. This is also equivalent to what
we have repeatedly noted: that the Perfect Human Being and the world (includ-
ing its human beings) are all created ‘according to the Form or Image’ of the
Real, and that they are also the second-level shadows of the Real (see for
example [1.163.20, 11.652.25, 111.343.25], and also [ Kanz : 1 142, 1 148]).
Likewise the computer today is certainly created as a certain kind of ‘image’
of some specific aspects of the human mind, and certainly the way the computer
works resembles the human mind in many respects. However the shadow or the
image in the mirror (or photocopier) resembles at best only one facet of the orig-
inal. Likewise human beings, for example, do not fully resemble the Real, just as
computers do not (and cannot) fully resemble humans in many other respects.
As we have seen, Ibn ‘Arabi repeatedly showed that in many respects both
the world and the essential (spiritual) human being work in the same way. That
is why he generally considers the world as a great human being ( al-insan al-
kabir) and the human being as microcosm ( ‘alam saghir) [III. 11.18]. Just as our
own world is essentially constituted by the meanings, images and states that are
reflected in our spirit, soul and intellect, so the world also reflects the divine
‘meanings’ brought into creation by the Universal Intellect, so that the phenom-
ena that we perceive are the doubly reflected forms of these original meanings.
However, Ibn ‘Arabi also repeatedly asserts that the world would not exist if the
observing ‘eye’ or ‘I’ of the viewer was not also always there. 21 So because of
the underlying reality of the created world as essentially ‘imaginal’ forms or
multiple ‘reflections’ or shadows, we can only understand the cosmos if we
understand how we perceive it, since for Ibn ‘Arabi it is all ultimately, and quite
literally ‘in the mind’ - albeit a different kind of ‘Mind’ at each level of mani-
festation.
It is known that the movie which is displayed on the cinema screen is com-
posed of a large number of succeeding still pictures that pass rapidly before the
eye at very short intervals, so that the human mind observes only smooth
changes between those rapidly successive pictures. By running this movie at the
proper speed we feel (by illusion) as if a normal motion of objects and images is
happening on the screen. So if we suppose that the screen has no visible edges,
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 161
and especially with the new technology of three-dimensional (laser holography)
movies, it would be very hard initially to distinguish this illusion from reality.
Now if we examine how the picture is displayed on the screen of the compu-
ter monitor, we realize that it is even more closely similar to Ibn ‘Arabi’s view
of creation. In this way the whole cosmos is a combination and rapid succession
of imaginal forms (images, reflections or ‘shadows’) that are created by or
through the Single Monad in a similar manner to the single electron beam which
is creating the picture on the computer screen one pixel at a time.
As Ibn ‘Arabi has pointed out, the Single Monad is continuously and perpetu-
ally ‘wearing’ new forms which make us see and otherwise experience motion.
When we open our eyes we see a picture of many things around us, and if we keep
on watching we see things moving. Each mental picture is also created in series
and not all at once, as we have noted before (sections 5.5 and 5.6). In every single
instance and at each single point of space there exists a monad with a specific
unique form, and we have explained before (sections 3.15 and 4.1) that it takes the
Monad a full divine ‘Week’ of creation to appear in this fonn, but this divine
Week for us is like a single instant. This same monad, still in the same instant of
time - for us, but a full divine ‘Week’ for the Monad itself, since we only exist for
one moment in this Week: see section 3.6 - takes another fonn but in another point
of space, and so on. So in one single instant the picture that we see is a combina-
tion of a huge number of reflected forms of the same Single Monad. He or It scans
the whole of space at no time (for us) and without real motion (on the part of the
Single Monad), because space itself is what we subjectively experience as a conse-
quence of the succession of forms within this monad, and motion is meaningless
when we talk about one single all-encompassing entity. It takes the monad a full
‘Week’ of creation (i.e. seven ‘Days of event’: one for each direction of space -
up, down, right, left, front and back, and one for the observer - time) to scan all
the states in the cosmos, but since each one of us is one single state - as observers,
not as bodies - we live a single moment in each full ‘Week of event’, in which we
observe the other states around and within us as the traces or memory of the forms
left over by the Monad after it has created those states. Ibn ‘Arabi succinctly
referred to this cosmological fact, in a favourite image of the later mystical poets,
right in his Forward ( khutba ) to the Futuhdt, when he said:
Then He released the Breath, so the water waved because of its vibration and
foamed . . . Then the water diffidently withdrew and returned back heading
for the middle, and it left over its foam on the shore that it produced. So it
(the world) is the churning of this water that contains most things.
[1.4.7]
The ‘water’ here refers to the Single Monad itself (or the Greatest Element: Al-
Mu'jam Al-Sufi : 812-817, 826-828) because (in the famous expression of the
Qur’an) ‘every thing was created from the Water’, and the ‘foam’ is the created
forms (or their images) left over by the Single Monad after it has ‘scanned’ into
existence the created world (in six divine Days) and then returned back to the
1 62 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
middle to start over a new picture [11.438. 3] on Saturday. That is why Ibn ‘Arabi
also affirms that the cosmological ‘ruler’ of the last Day of time (Saturday) has
the ability of holding and fixing (i.e. memory), in order to hold the cosmic
picture and integrate it with what follows (see also section 3.5, Saturday as the
Day of Eternity).
When this perpetual creative process is conceptually ‘stopped’ and taken in
isolation, all this will form a kind of ‘still picture’ of things around us, including
ourselves both as bodies (matter) and as spirits or states of realization (mean-
ings). Within this conception, the dynamic manifest world, then, is the instanta-
neous, continuously renewed succession of these slightly changing still pictures.
As we showed in section 2.6, motion is observed because things successively
appear in different places, but indeed there is no actual motion: for the observed
objects are always at rest in the different positions that they appear in. Allah is
constantly re-creating the cosmos in ever-renewed forms.
Now what we have just mentioned is exactly like what happens on the screen
of the computer monitor: when we look at the screen at any instant of time, we
see a still picture that is composed of an array of dots (pixels) in the two dimen-
sions of the plane of the screen (for example 800 horizontal by 600 vertical
pixels). This still picture is made by a single electron beam that scans the screen
over and over again, one pixel at a time. It starts from the bottom left corner of
the screen and scans horizontally all the 800 pixels (one line), then it switches
back to the left to make the second line, and so on till all the screen is scanned,
ending up by the upper right corner; then it switches back to start a new picture
from the bottom left comer again in the same way. Because this process is per-
formed at very high speed or refresh rate (around 100 million times per second),
we only see a continuous picture in the two dimensions; we never see the pixels
being drawn one by one. By watching the succession of pictures, we observe
motion. While the beam creates them, each pixel on the screen wears a specific
form of a different colour and intensity that (slightly) changes from one still
picture and instant to the other. This momentary form that the pixels wear every
time they are scanned lasts only during the very short time that the beam is in its
place. Once the beam leaves the pixel for the next one, the form vanishes intrin-
sically; we only see the traces of these fonns for a short time till they are scanned
again to wear a new form.
In terms of Ibn ‘Arabi’s understanding of the cosmogonic process, the elec-
tron beam here is like the Single Monad/Pen/Intellect; the screen is like both our
imagination and, outwardly or objectively, the effective ‘substrate’ of creation
that Ibn ‘Arabi calls ‘the Dust’: al- ‘amd’)\ while the cosmos is like the series of
pictures on the screen, which are printed on our imagination and in the Universal
Tablet. Ibn ‘Arabi’s description of the world is identical to this example of
the computer monitor, even the names that he gives to the Single Monad as the
‘Higher Pen’ and to the cosmic Soul as the ‘Higher Tablet’, indicate that the
process of creation is similar to the process of a pen’s writing on a tablet, which
is also similar to the electron-beam writing on the screen. To take yet another of
Ibn ‘Arabi’s most favoured cosmological images, we creatures are the Tetters’
The Single Monad model of the cosmos 1 63
and the ‘words’ that are spoken by the Creator (through the creative, existentiat-
ing ‘Breath of the All-Merciful’), after having been written down by the Higher
Pen on the Higher Tablet (see section 7.8).
With a closer examination of this example, we can now realize the meaning
of the intertwined days and the taken-out days, and also the significance of the
(normal) week and Saturday - as the Day of Eternity - that we explained in
Chapters 3 and 4. If an observer was in one point of the computer screen (as we
are individually in one specific place in the world), a week for him or her would
be a combination of 800 by 600 instances of 800 by 600 ‘Weeks of events’,
because each point will be present (created) only while the electron beam is on
it, so it stays only one part of the 800 by 600 pixels ‘created’ during each run
(original Week/Day). Similarly, each entity in the world lives only one ‘instant’
(which equals an outwardly observable day over the entirety of entities in the
world) in each ‘Week’ of creation: i.e. only the time when the Single Monad
creates it or appears in its form. Therefore, a week for this point would be a
combination of different instants of many other Weeks of the original Weeks of
events. Also, because Saturday is the divine Day of manifest creation when each
entity realizes itself - and it does not realize itself (or the world) while being
created in the other six Days (see section 3.6) - we, as entities living in the
world, realize only the Saturdays’ instances, those that are manifest in time.
Therefore, all our life (as time) is Saturday, while the world as space is the other
six Days. In other words: the motion of the electron beam horizontally and verti-
cally on the screen creates the space in which the picture is viewed. This is iden-
tical to the cosmic Week-Days of creation from Sunday to Friday, while the
motion when the electron beam returns from the right-top to the lower-left corner
is identical to Saturday or the manifest instant of time, because time is the
motion by which we observe the succession of the pictures.
In section 7.10, we shall talk about dimensions in more detail, but it is good
to remember here what we have already said in section 2.11 about the two cycles
of life (see in particular Figure 2.1). The screen of the computer monitor is of
course two-dimensional (2-D). So the starting of the scanning of the screen from
the lower-left comer resembles the starting of the world by creating the Real
(0-D) as the pixel itself, and then the angels in 1-D. This in the real world,
according to Ibn ‘Arabi’s account of the astrological cycle of life, takes 11,000
years; but for the case of the computer monitor it takes a very short but also
fixed time, in which a fixed number of motions or jumps happen - 800 pixels for
example. Then after finishing the first line and by starting the second one, this
scanning or creating process moves us into two dimensions, to start the world of
jinn, while the 1-D world of angels continues. The scanning of the 2-D screen
continues until it is finished after a short but fixed time. There is no third dimen-
sion in normal computer monitors, but there is in the outside world: there,
according to Ibn ‘Arabi, when this manifest stage of creation starts after 54,000
years, it marks the creation of dunya (‘this lower world’). Then the after-world
starts in yet another dimension (4-D) - according to Ibn ‘Arabi after 9,000 more
years, although we have not moved yet into it (see section 7.10).
1 64 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
It is fascinating to notice that this analogy between the world and the compu-
ter applies to many of the details - not only with regard to the visible manifest
world, but also to the spiritual world that is analogous to the processor, the
memory, the hard disk and the software running inside the computer. It is
enough to notice that the processor of the computer - no matter how fast it may
be and how many jobs it may do very quickly - can do only one elementary job
at a time. So from outside we see multiple jobs and multiple images, running and
interacting, but from inside only one thing is manipulating all that, one by one,
in series, one single bit at a time. For example when we say that the speed of the
computer central processing unit is 3.4 GHz, this means that it can manipulate
3.4 billion bits every second, and the bit is the smallest piece of information,
which is the digital state of either 1 or 0, yes or no. This is indeed a huge speed,
yet surely the speed of the Single Monad creating the world is much larger, as
Allah plainly said: ‘ and He is the fastest of all calculators’ (6:62) - although this
is normally interpreted with regard to the Judgement Day.
7 The Single Monad model and its
implications for modern physics
This existence that we know in practice,
is not like the existence that we know by unveiling.
The mind does not know it, and thinking does not recognize it,
but remembrance (dhikr) will show it, while the secret will hide it
from the minds that are veiled by habits:
that is why they do not recognize what the secrets' understand.
(Diwan: 229)
As with most cosmological hypotheses, past and present, testing Ibn ‘Arabi’s
cosmological model and his understanding of time is not easy. Although a pre-
liminary test is simply its ability to resolve some of the standard paradoxes sur-
rounding time, as we shall shortly see below, more credible tests may not be
very easy to perform, and incontrovertible tests may be inaccessible - since Ibn
‘Arabi frequently reiterates, beginning with the very Introduction to the Futuhat,
that his most distinctive cosmological insights are ultimately based on forms of
inspiration, ‘unveiling’, and divine knowledge that are beyond the level of the
ordinary human intelligence.
So in this final chapter we shall discuss some of the consequences and poss-
ible methods to test the Single Monad model that we outlined in Chapter 6.
Some persisting paradoxes in current models will be discussed, such as the his-
torical Zeno’s paradoxes and the recent EPR paradox (sections 7.4 and 7.6). We
shall then go on to discuss some of the apparent consequences of Ibn ‘Arabi’s
cosmological model for various principles of physics, cosmology and philoso-
phy. We have already seen that, in this model, space and time are truly unified,
and that there is a drastically different conception of motion. Most other basic
properties of matter, like mass, density, softness and transparency, will be also
affected, suggesting the eventual possibility of conceiving a kind of ‘science’
dealing with certain phenomena of mysticism and the supernatural. In addition
to that, in this cosmological model, causality itself will have a different sense,
which would enable new perspectives for reconciling cosmology and theology.
166 The Single Monad model and its implications
7.1 Testing possibilities
One of the main consequences - and principles - of this model of cosmogony
and creation, as we have seen in the previous chapter, is that the creation is being
continuously refreshed, like a kind of computer screen. A first possibility could
be, therefore, to measure the ‘refresh rate’ of creation, which is also the smallest
quantum of time, or the length of the moment ( al-zaman al-fard). As we have
noted, this could be expected to be equal to 24 hours (or 24 x 60 x 60 seconds)
divided by the whole number of states or entities in the world. With such an
extremely small quantity of time, there is no possible device that could measure
it. 2 If we think, for example, of using high-speed cameras and then replaying
their images in slow motion in order to see the flickering, 3 we shall find that this
is not possible even in theory, no matter how fast the camera might be. Since the
camera, no matter how fast, is itself part of the world whose re-creation it is sup-
posed to observe, it will not be able to see its state of non-existence because then
it will not be existing itself. Similarly, we ordinarily do not notice the re-creation
of the world because we are part of it. However, a specially detailed study of the
memory and other human internal and external senses would be necessary to
judge how the actual process of perception of the world is happening with the
re-creation principle in mind, both in our ‘normal’ state and in those specially
enlightened perceptions of the ‘knowers’ which Ibn ‘Arabi points to as the ulti-
mate root of his cosmological thesis of ‘perpetual re-creation’.
On the other hand, other promising domains for testing and examining this
model would involve the properties of light particles (photons) and other ele-
mentary particles. The peculiar properties of photons that are normally treated as
electromagnetic waves can be a starting point to test the model above. The
photon, being a wave, has a probability of existence anywhere in space and at
any time as long as it is still undetected; it takes fixed space-time co-ordinates
only after it is detected either by the eye or by a device. We can therefore say
that the photon of light, being the fastest in nature, does not undergo any re-
creation, and that is why it is the fastest, because creation or re-creation is a
process that takes the smallest quantum of time. Therefore one key to test the
Single Monad model experimentally could be in the emission and absorption of
light by different known processes, or in the process of converting light into
mass (and vice versa) through electron-positron annihilation and pair production
(see further below).
The best and easiest potential domain of investigation in this regard is to look
at the electron orbits around the nucleus, where it is known that the electron
jumps between the orbits when it absorbs or emits a photon of light. Because
this process is quantized, the electron may not exist between the orbits; it is
therefore re-created in the new orbit (see also the following section). We can
therefore say that the re-creation time (i.e. the moment) equals the time the elec-
tron takes to move between the orbits (i.e. actually re-appears in the new orbit).
This time-gap, however, is different from one atom to another, or even from one
orbit to another inside the atom, because it depends on the kind of atoms and on
The Single Monad model and its implications 167
temperature, etc. It is not possible here to discuss this subject in detail, but it is
certainly a good point which may constitute a new subject of research.
We may also look in the annihilation of particles and anti-particles into light
and vice versa (‘pair production’). For example, when an electron meets with a
positron (each has a mass of 9.1 x 10“ 31 kg) they are both annihilated into a
massless photon (energy) according to the famous equation E = me 1 . One elec-
tron alone can not annihilate, and one positron alone can not annihilate. But it is
possible to convert energy into particles, as when two sufficiently strong photons
meet; they convert into an electron (negative charge e~) and a positron (positive
charge e + ). It is worth mentioning here that Ibn ‘Arabi has apparently referred to
phenomena that have only been known scientifically after the discovery of ele-
mentary particles at the beginning of last century. For example, he says:
When two monads or atoms (jawhardn ) [like two photons] are joined, it is
as though they are two bodies. That is to say, when they are joined with
each other, each one of them can be called a body (jism) so that in this
respect they are two bodies, as Fie said: ‘ and of every thing, We created two
pairs ’ (51:49). He actually created one pair - masculine and feminine, for
example. But He called it ‘two pairs’ for this reason that we just mentioned,
because each one of them alone without the other is not a pair, but when
another is added to it then each one of them may be called pair ( zawj ), so
they are two pairs.
[1.721.18]
In other places he says that the body is composed of at least eight points, like a
unit cube which is similar in shape to the Kaaba [III. 276. 6] (see also section 6.6).
We have already seen in Chapter 6 that, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmological symbol-
ism, the Kaaba represents the Single Monad. Therefore, we may look at the pos-
sibilities of how mass emerges out of massless photons in annihilation and pair
production and see if this phenomenon can be related to the cosmogonic concep-
tions of the ‘Week’ of creation explained in Chapter 3 and the ‘intertwining of
days’ explained in Chapter 4.
Yet another related and handier possibility of investigation involves the
refraction of light in transparent materials. As is well known, light slows down
when moving in transparent materials such as air, water and glass; usually the
denser the material, the more slowing light suffers, which is indicated as a higher
refraction index. The reason why this is the case is because light is absorbed by
atoms along the path and then is emitted again by almost every atom along its
path. Any absorption and emission of light can be related to the phenomenon of
re-creation, so the re-creation hypothesis can be investigated via the phenomena
underlying different refraction indexes. The refraction indexes of hundreds of
minerals and their density and other properties are already widely available. 4 So
it may be possible, by comparing these data, to find some correlation between
the refraction indexes and the underlying refresh rate of re-creation.
Testing this model could also be done by computer simulation, especially
168 The Single Monad model and its implications
since Ibn ‘Arab! himself (in Kitab Ayyam Al-Sha’n: 11-16) invited people who
can do more accurate calculations to calculate the intertwining of Days on a
smaller scale than hours (for example, minutes and seconds), as we pointed out
in section 4.4. This simulation would have to take into account that, as we men-
tioned in section 3.6, Ibn ‘Arabi’s theory means that the world is created in six
comic ‘Days’ as space and then displayed on the last Day of creation (Saturday)
as time.
In general, the possibilities of testing these hypotheses in physics are diverse
and worth trying, but here we are more interested in the theological and philo-
sophical consequences developed in the following sections.
7.2 Timeless motion
To start investigating some of the consequences of the cosmological principle of
continual re-creation, we can consider the case of the throne of Bilqis, which Ibn
‘Arab! (and his later commentators) have discussed in his Fusils Al-Hikam and
elsewhere. In most accepted understandings, motion is always associated with
time, because, no matter how fast objects move, they need a time greater than
zero to reach any point other than their original place. For example, it is well
known in physics that the photon of light is the fastest particle in the physical
world and that it travels at 300,000 km per second, so it can circle around the
Earth seven times in one second. However, this huge velocity is limited and not
instantaneous, so apparently physical motions always need time.
In the Qur’an, however, we read the story of the Prophet Solomon and Bilqis,
the Queen of Sheba, when Solomon said to his men:
‘ Which of you can bring me her throne before they come to me in submis-
sion? ” [Then] a stalwart of the jinn said: “I will bring it to you before you
can rise from your place, and I verily am strong and trusty for such work ’
(27:39)
But even this really quick action takes time, though very little, so
said the one who has knowledge of the Book: 5 7 will bring it to you before
your gaze returns unto you!’ [i.e. in less than the blink of the eye, actually
immediately]. Then when he (Solomon) saw it placed steadily before him,
he said: ‘This is by the Grace of my Lord to test me whether I am grateful or
ungrateful /’
(27:38-40)
In this mysterious story it is clear that al-Khidr brought the throne of Bilqis
from Yemen to al-Quds in no time. Because of its great importance in his view
of time and the cosmos, Ibn ‘Arabi devotes much of chapter 16 in his famous
book the Bezels of Wisdom to talk about this distinctive phenomenon of timeless
motion often associated with the extraordinary actions and manifestations of the
The Single Monad model and its implications 169
saints ( awliya ’) (Corbin 1969: 224-226). Ibn ‘Arabi, however, declares that in
reality this is not motion, but, rather, the throne was annihilated or extincted
from its original place and instantly re-created in front of Solomon, in no time,
based on the affirmation in those verses that Solomon saw the throne placed
‘steadily’ before him before ‘he returns his gaze ’ (i.e. her throne was not
shaking, as one would expect when an object moves quickly and then stops sud-
denly, owing to the deceleration). So indeed there was no motion, but rather - as
al-Qashani and Bali Effendi mentioned in their commentaries on this chapter -
all al-Khidr did was to switch the throne from its original location to the new
place in front of Solomon. 6
From this perspective this kind of phenomenon is easily explained, on the
basis of the re-creation principle, since, as Ibn ‘Arabi frequently affirms, such
apparent ‘miracles’ do not break the divine laws underlying the phenomena of
nature, but only break our ‘habits’ of perception and expectation [11.374.27]. In
fact everything that happens in Nature must be explainable under some divine
laws, and is in principle possible to be repeated [11.374. 1 1].
In terms of modem physics, this story actually corresponds to the pervasive
phenomena that happen in the atom whenever an electron moves from one orbit
to another, when it emits or absorbs a photon of light. It is well known in physics
that when the electron absorbs or emits a photon its distance from the nucleus in
the centre of the atom changes. This change of the distance, however, is abrupt:
i.e. it does not travel through between the two places, but rather it disappears from
its original orbit and reappears in the new orbit. Usually such kind of instantane-
ous motion is scarcely explained according to the novel equations of Quantum
Mechanics, and it is not explainable at all with the classical Newton’s equations
(see section 1.3). Indeed such inexplicable electron behaviour was the driving
force behind the discovery of the successful theory of Quantum Mechanics.
If we recall Ibn ‘Arabi’s definition of motion discussed in section 2.6, we can
easily account for this type of timeless motion. Such motion, according to Ibn
‘Arabi, is not an infinitely gradual change of positions from the start to the desti-
nation, but rather a new creation in the second place. However, if we want to be
very accurate, the motion of the throne of Bilqis, like the motion of electrons
between orbits and indeed any elementary motion, takes a single ‘Day of event’
which is equivalent to a single ‘atom of time’ of what we may count. Measuring
the time that the electron needs to switch between two successive orbs might be
the key to testing Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmological model and developing it in terms of
modern scientific theory. This smallest instant of time is the quantum ( al-zaman
al-fard) of the quantized time that we have discussed in sections 2.8, 4.1 and 6.5.
In normal cases, of course the distance travelled in this smallest moment is
also very short, which causes us to see gradual changes; but in principle the dis-
tance involved could be anything; as Allah wills, since, whether the change in
positions is small or large, the same process of re-creation is taking place. There-
fore, what we call the laws of physics or mechanics, are - in terms of Ibn
‘Arabi’s cosmological conceptions - just a qualitative ‘description’ of the
normally observed order of re-creation, not a real description of the actual
170 The Single Monad model and its implications
process of perpetual re-creation. We shall see further below that this conception
has a great impact on our understanding of causality the most fundamental prin-
ciple in physics.
7.3 Simultaneity
We have seen in section 1.3 that many classical theories considered time as an
absolute quantity. This coped very well with the common concept of simultane-
ity, where events which occur simultaneously in one frame of reference were
considered to have occurred simultaneously also in all other frames. With the
advent of the Special Theory of Relativity, the idea that light travels at a finite
speed in all directions and in all frames of reference changed this piece of
common sense. According to this new theory, simultaneous events in one frame
of reference are not necessarily considered simultaneous with regard to another
frame of reference moving at a relatively high speed with regard to the first.
According to Ibn ‘Arabi’s view of time and his model of the cosmos that we
have described above, the concept of simultaneity will have an even more rela-
tive aspect. With regard to us - i.e. considered as partial monads present on the
level of multiplicity - it is possible to have simultaneous events. The reason is
simply because normally we exist only for at one single location of the whole
momentary ‘Day of event’ (as we explained in section 2.16). For us, at every
single moment of re-creation there is a still picture (which contains infinitely
many events) displayed in the world. So from this perspective the concept of
simultaneity appears like the classical definition.
But according to the re-creation principle and the oneness of being discussed
in Chapters 5 and 6 - in addition to the concept of the single Day of event dis-
cussed in section 2.8 - there can be no two cosmic ‘events’ (englobing all of crea-
tion) actually happening at the same time, because "each Day He is upon some
(one, single) task ’ (55:29). Therefore, in reality there is no such thing as ‘simulta-
neity’ - with regard to the Single Monad who is creating the real flow of time
(see also Chapter 4) - because It wears only one created form at each instant of
time. Simultaneity, and therefore multiplicity, thus appear to occur only because
of the re-creation. But in reality there are not any two separate (all-encompassing)
‘events’ happening at the same created instant of time. We shall see the impor-
tance of this conclusion more clearly when we discuss the EPR paradox below.
7.4 Zeno’s paradoxes
Motion, as a manifestation of causality, is the main concern behind all the theories
of physics, from the pre-Socratics through Newton’s theory of gravity to the most
recent theories of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Gravity. Yet there are a
number of famous philosophers who have doubted that there could be any motion
at all, despite our daily experience. As is well known, those philosophers expressed
perspectives similar to Ibn ‘Arabi’s. Most notably, Parmenides of Elea (b. 510bc)
affirmed cosmological conceptions remarkably similar to Ibn ‘Arabi’s doctrine of
The Single Monad model and its implications 171
the oneness of being: he held ‘the One’ unchanging existence to be alone true,
while multitude and change were said to be an appearance without reality. This
doctrine was defended by his pupil Zeno (b. c. 488 bc), whose philosophy of
monism claimed that the many things which appear to exist are merely a single
eternal reality which he called Being (a term Ibn ‘Arabi also applies to the Single
Monad). The complex and rigorous adaptation of Parmenides’ hypotheses in
Plato’s Parmenides - constantly elaborated by the later Neoplatonists - offers even
closer analogies to Ibn ‘Arabi’s overall ontological system. Zeno wrote a book
containing forty paradoxes, and, although his book was lost, four of those para-
doxes were discussed by Aristotle in his Physics', the Dichotomy, the Achilles, the
Arrow and the Stadium. Each of those four paradoxes challenges all claims that
there is real motion (Heath 1981: 273-283; Sorensen 2003: 44-57; Darling 2004:
351; Leiber 1993: 77; Erickson 1998: 218-220).
The Dichotomy paradox concludes that there is no motion because that which
is moved must arrive at the middle of its course before it arrives at the end. In
order to traverse a line segment it is necessary to reach its midpoint. To do this,
one must reach the one-fourth point; to do this, one must reach the one-eighth
point, and so on ad infinitum. Hence motion can never begin, because the sum
1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + . . . equals one, but only after an infinite number of additions,
and therefore it actually approaches one but never reaches it. Even more perplex-
ing to the human mind is the attempt to sum 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + . . . backwards: for
we can never get started, since we are trying to build up this infinite sum from
the wrong end!
The paradox of Achilles attempts to show that, even though Achilles runs
faster than the tortoise, he will never catch her! Let us suppose that Achilles runs
at ten metres per second and the tortoise at only one metre per second, and that
when the race started the tortoise was ten metres ahead. After one second Achil-
les would arrive at the point where the tortoise was when the race started, but the
tortoise would have moved one metre further - so that by the time Achilles
covers this one metre, the tortoise would have advanced again 0.1 metre, and so
on. Thus Achilles can never catch the tortoise.
Zeno bases the above two arguments on the fact that once a thing is divisible,
then it is infinitely divisible. One could counter the above two paradoxes by pos-
tulating an atomic theory in which matter (or space) is composed of many small
indivisible elements. However the remaining two paradoxes cause problems only
if we consider that space is made up of indivisible elements that may be cut in
indivisible durations of time.
Turning to the third paradox of the Arrow: if we consider the path of an arrow
in flight, at each instant of its path the arrow occupies some position in space;
this is what it means to say that space is discrete. But to occupy some position in
space is to be at rest in this position. So throughout the entire path of the arrow
through space, it is in fact at rest! Or if in an indivisible instant of time the arrow
moved, then indeed this instant of time would be divisible (for example, in a
smaller instant of time the arrow would have moved half that distance).
The fourth paradox of the Stadium is a little more complicated, but it leads to
172 The Single Monad model and its implications
the same result as the above - i.e. that time and space can not be discrete - while,
on the contrary, we have seen that the first two paradoxes may be resolved only
if we assume that time and space are not continuous
The above four paradoxes challenge not only all scientific theories of motion but
also our everyday experience. For this reason they have often been dismissed as
logical nonsense. Many attempts, however, have also been made to dispose of them
by means of mathematical theorems, such as the theory of convergent series or the
theory of sets. Aristotle did not fully appreciate the significance of Zeno’s argu-
ments, since he called them ‘fallacies’, without actually being able to refute them.
Many modem scientists like to believe that axiomatic mathematics has dispelled
Zeno’s paradoxes, where now it is possible to talk about limits and infinity without
reaching any mathematical contradiction and it can be proved that the sum of an
infinite number of halving intervals is finite. But some recent philosophers such as
Bertrand Russell persisted with such arguments, and recently similar puzzling phe-
nomena (called the ‘quantum Zeno effect’) have been observed in radioactive atoms
(Misra and Sudarshan 1977: 756; Grossing and Zeilinger 1991: 321-326).
With Ibn ‘Arabi’s re-creation principle, we would have no difficulty at all in
resolving Zeno’s paradoxes and reconciling his conclusion that there is no motion
with our daily perceptions. So although there is no real motion in the sense that the
object gradually leaves its position to a new one, but rather it is re-created in ever
new positions so that we imagine it moving between these places. For example,
when we watch a ‘movie’ on the television, we have no doubt that nothing really
moves on the screen, but it is only a succession of different frames. According to
Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmological perspective, the whole world is exactly like that (see
section 6.8). As we noted in section 2.6, Ibn ‘Arabi plainly stated that the object
that we see moving actually is re-created in the distinct places between its start and
destination one after another and does not really ‘move’ between them [11.457.31],
so there is never any real motion in such a way that the object ‘gradually moves’
along its path. Thus Ibn ‘Arabi, like Zeno and Parmenides, believes that the whole
world is a manifestation of a single entity which alone can be described to have a
real existence. But Ibn ‘Arabi’s distinctive contribution is to show how the multi-
plicity of the world emerges from or within the Single Monad.
7.5 Discreteness and continuousness
There is no doubt that Zeno has presented a deep problem which, despite centu-
ries of efforts to resolve it, still seems to lack a truly satisfactory solution. As
Frankel wrote:
The human mind, when trying to give itself an accurate account of motion,
finds itself confronted with two aspects of the phenomenon. Both are inevi-
table but at the same time they are mutually exclusive. Either we look at the
continuous flow of motion; then it will be impossible for us to think of the
object in any particular position. Or we think of the object as occupying any
of the positions through which its course is leading it; and while fixing our
The Single Monad model and its implications 173
thought on that particular position we can not help fixing the object itself
and putting it at rest for one short instant.
(Frankel 1942: 1-25, 193-206)
This basic dilemma of discreteness and continuousness has kept coming up in
various guises, but most clearly in the long historical debate on the nature of
light: whether it is particles or waves. With the success of the wave theory in the
nineteenth century, the continuum seemed to have won. But in 1 899, when Max
Planck solved the ‘black body problem’ 7 by postulating that atoms could absorb
or emit energy only in discrete amounts, the age of Quantum Theory began.
Soon after that, Bohr used the concept of quantization to construct the first suc-
cessful atomic model, and Einstein was able to analyse the photoelectric effect
only by adopting the quantum nature of light. However, Quantum Theory was
not able to solve the question of motion and change, where the continuous theory
of Relativity was more successful.
So the human mind is accustomed to classifying quantities as either countable
or uncountable, or either discrete or continuous; there is no other way. This is
inevitable on the level of multiplicity. But on the level of oneness (i.e. of all-
inclusive ahadiyya or ‘unicity’) there would be no meaning for such terms. A
first look at lbn ‘Arabi’s model could conclude that, on the level of multiplicity,
the world should be certainly discrete, and therefore that lbn ‘Arabi might easily
adopt the atomist view. But the issue this raises is quite similar to what we have
discussed earlier in Chapter 2 about the length of the moment and whether it is
composed of discrete sub-moments, or whether it has a length at all. We have
seen that it is not easy to decide for either case. Similarly, it is not easy to judge
- even on the multiplicity level - whether the world is ultimately continuous or
discrete. Although there are discrete events happening in discrete times, still the
change from one event to another looks continuous, just like the flow of normal
days; there is no abrupt change. Although we can easily divide events over days
and classify them according to the date, actually the relation between any two
consecutive events that happened during the day is not different from those
which happened also consecutively but on different days - for example, right
before and after morning or evening. In other words, the motion of the Earth
around its axis, though generating the appearance of different distinct days, it is
itself a continuous process. Likewise, the all-creative ‘motion’ of the Single
Monad is also a continuous process in everlasting alteration between ‘daytimes’
and ‘night-times’, manifestation and being hidden, material and spiritual - yet
there is no point of separation or abrupt transformation between any two periods
or states. That is why lbn ‘Arabi calls the terms of discreteness and continuous-
ness ‘disconnected’ (, munfasil ) and ‘connected’ ( mnttasil ), because for him the
actual process of change (re-creation) is like a one-dimensional flow of divine
manifestation. So if there is an apparent continuity or discontinuity, that would
only be in our imagination or abstract consideration, but not in reality
[III. 324. 35-325. 18].
174 The Single Monad model and its implications
7.6 The EPR paradox
Physics theories, which are mainly based on explaining motion and its relation
to time, have worked fine for centuries, so that people have been able to send
spaceships to the Moon and other planets with great timing accuracy. Dismissing
Zeno’s paradoxes, therefore, had no negative consequences for applied physics.
However, no single theory up to now has been able to explain all observations,
especially when it comes to the microcosms of subatomic particles, where new
paradoxes are still arising.
One of the most pertinent tests of Ibn ‘Arabi’s cosmological model is that
through its principles the prominent Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox
could be so easily and readily understood. The EPR paradox demonstrates the
discrepancy between the two principal theories of physics: Quantum Theory and
Relativity. Quantum Theory is one of the most successful theories of science. It
explained the structure of atoms, the properties of materials, elementary particles
and stars. Although it was generally consistent with the results of many decades
of experimenting, the basic conceptual foundations of Quantum Mechanics can
lead to some puzzling paradoxes and strange unacceptable features. The EPR
paradox is possibly one of the most compelling of these apparently peculiarly
unacceptable features.
In 1935 Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen - in their famous article titled: ‘Can
Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?’
(Einstein et al. 1935: 777) - developed a thought experiment to demonstrate
what they felt was a lack of completeness in Quantum Mechanics. This so-called
‘EPR paradox’ has led to much subsequent and still ongoing research. The
purpose of the EPR thought experiment was to expose the profound peculiarities
of the quantum description of a physical system extended over a large region of
space. It seemed that, under certain conditions, a quantum system of two entan-
gled particles could in theory exchange information instantaneously or, at least,
faster than the speed of light. This clearly contradicts the principle of ‘locality’
in Einstein’s theory of Relativity, which supposes that the speed of light is a
maximum terminal velocity. The phenomena of entanglement also lead to the
violation of Heisenberg’s sacred ‘uncertainty principle’, which declares that not
all the classical physical observables (e.g. position and momentum) of a system
can be simultaneously known with unlimited precision, even in principle.
On the basis of these contradictions, EPR refused this deterministic nature of
Quantum Mechanics and postulated that the existence of ‘hidden variables’,
some thus far unknown properties of the system, should account for the para-
doxical discrepancy. Niels Bohr, on the other hand, favoured the view put
together in the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of Quantum Theory and refused the
idea of hidden variables (Bohr 1935: 696).
In 1964 John Bell proposed a mechanism to test for the existence of these
hidden variables, and he developed his ‘inequality principle’ as the basis for
such a test (Bell 1966: 447). This was followed by many experiments to verify
this principle. The most successful of these experiments was performed by Alain
The Single Monad model and its implications 175
Aspect and his colleagues in 1982 (Aspect 1982a: 1804; Aspect 1982b: 91).
Their experiment consisted of light polarization measurements made on pairs of
photons, moving in opposite directions, emitted simultaneously in single transi-
tions by calcium atoms, then measured by sensitive detectors on each side. The
results of the experiment clearly violate Bell’s inequalities, eliminating the need
for the existence of hidden variables and thus supporting the predictions of non-
local Quantum Mechanics (which violate Einstein’s locality principle and even
common sense). The results showed that apparently the left-hand detecting appa-
ratus was sending some kind of message to the right-hand photon informing it as
to how the left-hand one was set up, so that the right-hand photon could interact
in the appropriate way with the right-hand apparatus. But as a matter of fact
there is no communication at all between the left and the right photons, and, if
we suppose there is, then the signal would have to travel faster than the speed of
light.
Many even more accurate experiments have been performed after that, and all
show that it is as if time ‘stops’ between the pair of entangled particles and they
interact instantaneously despite the large distance between them. Although this
experimental outcome supports the fundamental concepts of the theory of
Quantum Mechanics and contradicts Einstein’s locality principle, but there is no
adequate theoretical explanation for it, so far.
Now one of the striking consequences of Ibn ‘Arabi’s principle of re-creation
by the Single Monad is that such strange instantaneous behaviour between the
two entangled particles would be natural and very easily explained. According to
his cosmological theories the constant creation of the manifest world proceeds
like a movie composed of succeeding still pictures. Each momentary ‘picture’ of
the world is like a closed system, where any change in one part of this picture
would require another synchronizing change or changes in other part(s), so that
the whole does not change because there is no external interaction, only ‘inter-
nal’ changes. We have also explained that all ‘parts’ of the world are created in
series by the Single Monad that constantly creates (‘puts on’) ever new forms,
one total individual form at each instant of time - such that each created form
then ceases to exist (intrinsically, not through any other force) the next moment
after its existence.
Now if we take that theory of cosmic re-creation into account, we can simply
say that the two entangled particles in these experiments, like any two entities in
the world, never existed together at the same. Rather, the Single Monad first
wears the form of the first particle - i.e. causes this particle to exist (under
special conditions); then this unique Single Monad itself wears other forms in a
specific sequence (see section 5.6), until it comes to wear or create the form of
the second particle - regardless of where it is in space. But by the moment of
this second state of creation, the first particle is out of existence, and therefore it
encountered no time. Now, because the two particles are ‘entangled’ (in a closed
system), any change on the first form that corresponds to the first particle will be
kept in the ‘memory’ of the Single Monad, so that when it comes to wear the
form of the second particle it does so in a way that keeps the total state of the
176 The Single Monad model and its implications
system of the two particles unchanged (according to the Quantum Mechanical
laws, because it is a closed system). This process is instantaneous; no matter
how far apart the two particles are, because only one particle really exists at a
time, and during the interval between creating the two particles they were both
out of existence, encountering no time. This hypothesis corresponds to Ibn
‘Arabi’s account of ‘the real flow of time’ that we explained in Chapter 4.
In fact what we have just said applies to any (large or small) system and not
simply the system of those two entangled particles, but in normal cases the effect
of the ongoing process of cosmic re-creation is not noticeable because of the
many possible changes that could happen in any part of the complex system and
the corresponding distraction of our limited means of attention and perception.
In other words: any change in any part of the world will cause synchronization
changes in all other parts, because the world as a whole is a closed system. This
last statement is in fact another and more precise depiction of the whole cosmic
process of existentiating causality. This conception also provides a hypothetical
explanation for certain ‘para-psychological’ phenomena.
7.7 Causality and induction
As Ibn ‘Arab! often pointed out in his analyses of our unconscious reliance on
our ‘habitual’ forms of perception {‘add), the main obstacle that prevents us
from discovering the reality of creation is our deep trust in causality and induc-
tion. It is true that we live by causes and results, but indeed this is only a limited
and superficial perspective with regard to the underlying realities. The fact of the
matter is that what we refer to as ‘cause’ and ‘result’ - i.e. what Ibn ‘Arabi nor-
mally calls the asbab (s. sabab), or intermediate or ‘apparent’ causes - are
chronologically arranged, but ontologically unrelated. This is quite evident in
terms of the re-creation principle discussed above, but Ibn ‘Arabi also clearly
declares that ‘Allah creates things “next to” ( ‘ inda ) the causes and not “through”
( bi ) them’ [11.204.13, Tadbirat : 312]. As we’ve already seen above and in
section 2.6 that motion is only a new creation in a different place, so there is no
deeper, inherent ontological relation between the two created states before and
after motion.
Also - as a result of the readily observed systematic causes and effects - we
normally rely upon induction in drawing most of our conclusions about causal-
ity. But in chapter 56 of the Futuhat, Ibn ‘Arabi argues that ‘in reality induction
(al-istiqra’) does not give any (true divine) knowledge’ [1.285.3]. The reason
why he concludes that is simply because nothing is ever truly repeated
[1.285.28], as we have also shown above in discussing the re-creation principle.
Induction ultimately means that we expect something to occur in a specific
definitive way, based on previous observations of similar circumstances and
regularities.
For these reasons, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, the basic observational and logical
principles that the scientists and philosophers of his time relied upon in seeking
the truth are indeed not firm, so that their practical success deceives us with
The Single Monad model and its implications 177
regard to their limitations and restricted spheres of application. For this reason
Ibn ‘Arabi’s answer to lbn Rushd (see section 5.1) was first ‘yes’, but then he
immediately added again ‘no’, to highlight the limitations of the philosophers’
methods, in comparison to his own reliance on divine inspiration and ‘unveiling’.
Ibn ‘Arabi, however, does not deny the phenomenological relevance of the
apparent, intermediate ‘causes’ ( asbab ): on the contrary he affirms that they are
intentionally established by Allah, so they are unavoidable [11.653.11], and we
must rely on such causes to reach our goals. So those observable secondary or
apparent causes may not be removed:
And we already informed you that apparent-causes {asbab) are divine veils,
so that removing them is not possible except through them (i.e. by other sec-
ondary causes). So the very removing of causes is in fact fixing them; and
the reality of abolishing them is (actually) affirming them.
[11.553.31; see also 1.382.26, II1.340.9, IV.275.23 and III.235.28]
So since they are veils, we have to look through them to see the Real, Who con-
tinually creates the causes and the results and arranges them in this specific
‘habitual’ dependency. As Ibn ‘Arabi explains, Allah creates simply by the
Command ‘Be’, and therefore He does not need the secondary causes; but He
establishes these apparent causes for us to unveil them [11.413.35], though we
would never be able to unveil the causes completely and permanently, especially
since our own unenlightened mentality itself is the main veil [II. 553. 6].
In the short chapter 252 of the Futuhat Ibn ‘Arabi analyses the known spirit-
ual state of ‘abolishment’ {al-mahw), in which the spiritually realized person is
freed from the unconscious limitations of habitual perception ( ‘ada), so that the
rule of apparent ‘causality’ is removed for him and he can directly perceive the
universal reality of ever-renewed creation. There he says:
For the person in the state of ‘abolishment’ (of the ‘habitual’ perception of
causality), relying on causes is removed, but not the causes. For Allah never
deactivates the rule of (divine) wisdom with regard to the (created) things, and
the apparent-causes are (like all other creations) divine ‘veils’ established.
The greatest of those veils may not be removed, which is your own indi-
vidual self ( ‘ ayn : also, ‘eye’). For your individual self is also the cause (still
sabab) behind the existence of (the possibility of our) knowing and recog-
nizing Allah - since knowing Allah may not come to exist except through
your individual self!
So it is not possible for you (i.e. the veil of your ego-self) to be ‘removed’
with Allah’s wanting to be known (by you). So He abolishes you from (wit-
nessing) yourself, so you no longer stop with (witnessing) yourself, even
though your individual self still exists, since the manifestation (of His trans-
forming) influence is from Him. This is just as (in the famous incident at
Badr alluded to in verse 8:17) He ‘abolished’ (the normal causal role of) the
Messenger of Allah, may Allah have peace and mercy upon him, with
178 The Single Monad model and its implications
regard to his throwing, despite the (actual) existence of throwing by Him: so
He said ‘ and you threw nof , so he abolished him; ‘ when you threw’, so
He affirmed the apparent-cause; ‘but Allah threw ’ (8:17), and He only threw
by the hand of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah have peace and mercy
upon him.
[II. 553. 5]
The apparent-causes are indeed manifestations of the influences of His Names,
which is why we see the effects following from those causes, but indeed the effect
- like all of creation - is also only (ultimately) caused by Allah Himself. This
means, as Ibn ‘ Arabi affirms, that the names of causes are in fact Names of God:
Then you have to know that the contingent things (creatures) are by essence
in need (of being given existence), so that need always accompanies them
because their essence (as contingent, ‘needy’ things) is forever. So He estab-
lished for them the apparent-causes ( asbdb ) through the presence of which
they receive what they need. So they are in need of the apparent-causes,
therefore Allah made the individual-reality ( ‘ayn) of those apparent-causes
Names for Him. So the names of the causes are from (the influence of) His
Names, may He be Exalted, so that (the contingent thing) should only need
Him, because this is the correct knowledge (of the nature of things).
So there is no difference, for the people of unveiling, between the names
that are said to be the Names of Allah according to (religious) custom and
the revelation, and the names of the apparent-causes, so far as their (all)
being Names of Allah, because He said: ‘ you all are in need of Allah''
(35:15). For we see in reality the need for the apparent-causes, so the names
of the apparent-causes must be Names of Allah, the Exalted. So we call out
in prayer to those names (of the apparent-causes) by (the needfulness of our
actual) state, not through outward words (of prayer).
Thus when we are touched by hunger we rush to seek the food that may
remove the pain of hunger. So we are in need of it, and it has no need of us
- although we (in fact) are only in need of Allah. So that (food) is one of
His Names: I mean the form of this food descends to take the place of the
spoken or written word of the (corresponding) divine Name. That is why He
ordered to be thankful to the apparent-causes (31:14), because He ordered
us to be thankful to Him - that is, to thank Him through them.
[III. 208. 7]
But seeing through the apparent causes (to the One real Cause or Creator) is not
easy, and ultimately the meditations and path of ascension of the spiritual seeker
are all directed toward that. At the end of this path, the seeker will see only the
Image of the Real (rather than his ego-self), and that is why ‘whoever knows
himself knows his Lord’.
However it is very important to notice that at the highest steps of this ascen-
sion, as the seeker advances, he gradually loses the awareness of his limited
The Single Monad model and its implications 179
physical composition, so that what remains at the end is the pure receptivity of
‘hearing’, just as ‘hearing’ ( sama , or sam ') was the first condition of all things
created. Thus Ibn ‘Arab! says:
He said: ‘ and Our word unto a thing, when We intend it, is only that We say
unto it “Be!”, and it is ’ (16:40), but He deafened us from perceiving this
word except by the way of faith, and He blinded us from seeing His inten-
tion ( tawajjuh ) on creating the things, by the apparent-causes that He estab-
lished. thus He sends the rain down, and it falls; and He makes fertile the
land, the seeds sprout; then He sends out the sunlight, so the plants rise, and
(the seeds) harvested, ground up, kneaded, baked and chewed by the teeth;
then they were swallowed, ripened in the stomach, taken by the liver and
made into blood, sent into the vessels and distributed over the body until the
(life-giving) vapour rises out of them, so the life of this body is for the sake
of that breath (that we breathe).
So these are the primary apparent-causes (for life), along with (His)
moving the celestial spheres and the motions of their planets, casting the
rays on the places (illuminated by) the (celestial) lights - (all that) under the
supervision of the Universal Soul, with Allah’s permission, and the support
of the (First) Intellect for (the Universal Soul). All these are veils, estab-
lished as the fundamental (apparent-causes), in addition to the other, lesser
apparent-causes. So the (human receptivity or) ‘hearing’ needs to break
through all those veils until it hears the (creative divine) word ‘Be!’. There-
fore He created in the person of faith the power of faith, so that it flows into
his hearing until he realizes the word ‘Be’, and it flows into his sight until
he witnesses the One Who gives existence to the apparent-causes. And He
has done all that through the ‘Breath of the All-Merciful’.
[11.413.35]
So - despite their ultimately being ontologically unrelated - one cannot deny the
effect of the apparent-causes. Therefore, we have to look at other prospects for
redefining the principle of causality. We have seen before (section 3.5) that Ibn
‘Arabi affirmed that after all the forms in the world have been created in the six
Days from Sunday to Friday (which is space), nothing remained to be created on
Saturday, that is the ‘Day of eternity’ or the instant of time that we live in at
each now. What remains is only continual creative changing the states of things
‘from (one) state to (another) state and from (one) station to (another) station’
[1.61.14], Therefore the system of the world, as a still picture created in the
Week, is a ‘closed system’ in the meaning that all changes in it are necessarily
internal changes.
Therefore, whatever change happens in one part of this world will require
another change in other part(s), so that the total state does not change. This last
statement seems to articulate a new, more adequate fonn of the causality princi-
ple, and indeed this is exactly one of the principles of Quantum Mechanics
which has proved to be successful over the last century (see section 1.3). This is
180 The Single Monad model and its implications
in fact a very important conclusion and it could be the key to a new understand-
ing of the reality of motion. This also might explain the types of what science
tends to view as inexplicable ‘para psychological’ phenomena, such as the tele-
kinetic effects and telepathy which are widely known as karamat (acts of grace).
The world in all its directions of space and time, past and future, here and there,
is already encoded (via the divine Foreknowledge) in the Single Monad, so
whoever has any access to that Source should be able to predict what is in or
affects other parts of the world. If we want to study this issue further we have to
look at the divine Attributes of Power and Will, and their image in the human
being and the world, and relate them to time and space, as Ibn ‘Arabi discussed
at the end of his short treatis e Al-Durrat Al-Bayda.
7.8 Superstrings and the science of letters
In the standard model of elementary particle physics, particles are considered to
be points (or spheres) moving through the four dimensions of space-time. Extra
abstract dimensions are needed to take into account the different properties such
as mass, charge and spin. 8 This standard model eventually led to obvious dis-
crepancies between Einstein’s theory of General Relativity and the Quantum
Field Theory that is essentially based on the wave properties of matter (see
section 1.3, and also section 7.6).
Around 1985, the new String Theory suggested that all elementary particles
can be represented by fundamental building blocks called ‘strings’ that can be
closed, like loops, or open, like a hair. The different vibrational modes (or
‘notes’) of the string represent the different particle types, since different modes
are seen as different masses or spins. One mode of vibration makes the string
appear as an electron, another as a photon. But one of the most remarkable pre-
dictions of String Theory is that space-time has ten dimensions rather than four.
Flowever, six of these dimensions are curled up very tightly, which is why we
may never be normally aware of their existence. Other subsequent extensions of
the String Theory anticipate even higher dimensions.
There are deep and exciting similarities between the principles of the String
Theory and Ibn ‘Arabi’s views. We have already mentioned in section 2.1 that
he says that there are four ‘fundamental principles of existence’ that are - in
addition to ‘another six derived from them’ - enough to describe the state of
everything in the world [III.404.22]. But what is most exciting in this regard is
Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of the mysterious ‘science of letters’ ( ‘ilm al-huruf) or what
he calls the ‘world of Breaths’ ( ‘alam al-anfas).
We’ve already mentioned above (section 6.6) the complex symbolic cosmo-
logical analogies that Ibn ‘Arabi elaborates, beginning in the long second chapter
of the Futiihat, between the cosmos, the Single Monad and the Greatest Element
on the one hand, and the world of letters on the other hand. Ibn ‘Arabi adds that
‘the world of letters is a nation like other nations . . . and those who know that
are only the people of unveiling in our path, . . . and they (the nation of letters)
are grouped into groups like the normal world that we know’ [1.58. 12].
The Single Monad model and its implications 181
These ‘groups’ refer to the groups of the spiritual hierarchy that we have
mentioned above, which Ibn ‘Arabi explained in detail in chapter 73 of the
Futuhdt.
Ibn ‘Arabi also mentioned at the end of chapter 1 of the Futuhat that ‘the first
line that I read (from the hidden knowledge of the Spirit from whom he took
everything that he wrote in the Futuhat ), and the first secret of this line that I
knew, is what I am going to mention in this second chapter’ [1.51.30]. Then he
wrote about 40 extremely dense pages on the cosmological dimensions and sig-
nificance of the science of letters in chapter 2. 9 In this chapter and other parts of
the Futuhdt, Ibn ‘Arabi mentioned many mysterious facts about the letters and
their world and cosmological meaning. For example, Ibn ‘Arabi explained there
the relation between the characters of the word azal, as written in Arabic, and
the meaning of time ( zamdn ) by tracing the mysterious relation between the
letters in both words, as he mentioned in his Kitab Al-Azal.
This is in fact a very broad and complicated subject, and we cannot go into
details here. What we do want to summarize is that Ibn ‘Arabi considers the
entire cosmos as the words of the Real spoken through the ‘Breath of the All-
Merciful’ [1.366.1, 11.403.21, 459.6; see also Al-Masa’il 105], just like the mean-
ings that we create through the words that we speak which are also composed of
letters (or sounds) that are essentially the vibrations of our vocal strings under
the influence of our breath. In chapter 2 of the Futuhdt, Ibn ‘Arabi gives details
about the cosmological significance of each letter, how it is produced, what kind
of vibrations it carries, and also the different orbs that contribute to produce it.
Then in the long chapter 198 [11.390-478], which is titled ‘On Knowing the
Breath’, Ibn ‘Arabi mentioned remarkable facts about these cosmic meanings of
the letters and sounds, and he explained the role of each divine Name of Allah in
creating the different parts of the world and the different letters of the alphabet.
As one small illustration, we refer here to the letter (and sound) alif ('), the
first letter in the Arabic alphabet (and many other languages), which Ibn ‘Arabi
treats as symbolically identical to the Single Monad we have mentioned above
(section 6.6) - not only because it is first but because it represents the closest
thing to the pure creative, foundational divine ‘Breath’ itself. First Ibn ‘Arabi
asserts that ‘a/;/ is not from (other) letters’ [1.65.23], but he stresses that ‘all
letters (like the world) may be broken down into and built up from it, while it
does not break down into them’ [1.78.22], so this letter alif is present in every
letter or word, just like the Single Monad that is also present in everything in the
world. Indeed any sound that we produce starts by the sound of letter alif
because it is simply the beginning of the blowing of the breath through the
larynx.
So since the cosmos is the words of the Real and those words are composed of
letters or sounds produced through the Breath of the All-Merciful;, these letters
are the strings that constitute everything in the cosmos, just as the meanings that
we create when we speak are also composed of the letters of the alphabet. Even
the written shape and curvature of the Arabic characters, for Ibn ‘Arabi, have
deep hidden meanings that relate to the cosmos in many mysterious ways: in that
1 82 The Single Monad model and its implications
sense, those shapes, just like the strings in the Strings Theory, are essentially
either open like letter alif(}), or closed like letters mim (<>) and waw (j).
The science of letters and of their equivalent numbers ( ‘ilm al-jafr) was not
Ibn ‘Arabi’s own invention, but was widely known in various ‘esoteric sciences’,
for example those that deal with magic and talismans, where they replace each
letter by its equivalent numbers and make certain calculations and tables that are
said to have secret magical effects, or may tell hidden facts. In her famous book
Mystical Dimensions of Islam , Annemarie Schimmel devoted a separate appen-
dix to the wider theme of letter symbolism in Sufi literature (Schimmel 1975:
41 1 — 425). In fact this kind of mythology dates back to the time of Pythagoras of
Samos (582-504 bc), who visualized the world as perfect harmony, like musical
notes, which depends on the system of numbers (which were written with the
same letters of the alphabet in both Greek and later in Arabic).
As we said, these letters are arranged in a symbolic cosmological hierarchy
parallel to the spiritual hierarchy of the saints that Ibn ‘Arabi explained in
chapter 73 of the Futuhat. In fact it is noteworthy that Ibn ‘Arabi calls the
members ( awlivd ) of the spiritual hierarchy ‘the world of Breaths’ [II.6.21], or
‘the Men of the world of Breaths’ [II. 11.9]. Also that is why sometimes Ibn
‘Arabi calls the single Days of each singular instant ‘the Days of Breaths’
[III. 127.34], because in this Day the creative divine Breath is taken which is the
string or the vibration that appears in existence. Hence in each single Day the
string (or the Single Monad, or the ‘real-through-whom-creation-takes-place’) is
vibrating to produce the letter (or sound) alif and the world therefore is the
words that are composed of these alifs that are produced in the succeeding Days.
The Single Monad is the ultimate elementary String, but there are also other ele-
mentary strings: just as letter alif forms other letters (both in writing and speak-
ing) the Single Monad also forms other monads that are the entities of everything
in the world.
For Ibn ‘Arabi, this cosmological analogy applies both to speaking (sounds)
and to writing (characters), because the ‘Higher Pen’ (that is the Single Monad)
is creating the cosmos by literally writing the words of the Real in the ‘Higher
Tablet’ of the Universal Soul. This process of writing produces the ‘Pen-sounds’
(sarif al-aqlam), which are the vibrations that are referred to in the hadith
recounting the ascension of the Prophet Muhammad [III. 61. 9].
So we say that the First Intellect that is the first-created (or first-originated:
awwal mubda'), and he is the Higher Pen. There was nothing else originated
before ( muhdath ) him, but he was influenced by what Allah newly originated
in him by raising up through him the ‘Protected Tablet’ (of the World-Soul),
like the raising up of Eve from Adam in the world of material-bodies, so that
this Tablet is going to be the substrate and place for what this divine Higher
Pen writes (through the ‘words’ of creation). Now the delineation of the
letters is designed to indicate what the Real made as signs pointing to Him.
So the Protected Tablet was the first existent raised up (from another:
mawjud inbiathf). And it is reported in the revelation (of the Prophet) that
The Single Monad model and its implications 1 83
‘the first of what Allah created was the Pen; then He created the Tablet and
said unto the Pen: “write!”, so the Pen said: “what to write?” Then Allah
said unto him: “you write and I shall dictate you”’ \Kanz : 15116]. So the
Pen writes in the Tablet what Allah dictates to him, which is His Knowledge
regarding His creation that He shall create till the resurrection Day.
[1.139.23]
Ibn ‘Arabi also divides the letters of the alphabet between four existents: the real
(through whom creation takes place), the angels, the jinn and the Humans
[1.53.1], which we may render into vibrations in 0-D, 1-D, 2-D and 3-D as we
shall explain in the following section. This, he explains, is because hearing
(sam‘) is based on four realities [11.367.24], and that is why in the science of
music and notes there are four main notes: the Bum (the thick string), the Zir (the
highest string), Muthanna (duo), and Muthallath (trio): each moves the soul in a
special way, causing the emotions of happiness and sadness [11.367.26].
But as Ibn ‘Arabi explains in a chapter (182) entirely devoted to ‘hearing’ -
i.e. metaphysical ‘receptivity’ in all its forms:
So ‘Hearing’, in this sense, is divided into three kinds: divine hearing, spir-
itual hearing and natural hearing. The divine hearing is that of the (divine)
secrets ( asrdr ) and it is hearing from everything, in everything and through
everything, because all of the world, for them (the true divine ‘knowers’),
is the words of Allah, and ‘His words are never exhausted ’ (18:109, 31:27).
Therefore they have, corresponding to those (divine creative) words, ‘hear-
ings’ that never end . . .
And the spiritual hearing is connected to the sounds ( sarij) of the divine
pens on the Tablet of what exists, (which is) ‘Protected’ from changes and
substitutions because the whole of existence is ‘ a spread parchment (riqq
manshur, 52:3) and the world in relation to it is an ‘ inscribed book ’ ( kitab
mastur, 52:2): so the Pens speak out, and the ears of the minds hear, and the
words are engraved (in manifest existence) so they are witnessed.
[II. 367. 7-9, 18-19]
So these words are the spiritual and material world that we live in, which is
therefore the succession of the vibrations (letters) produced by the divine crea-
tive Breath through the Single Monad that is the Universal Intellect, and dis-
played in the Universal Tablet. This subject is indeed very diverse and important,
and it is worth a separate study. Ibn ‘Arabi himself spent a good part of the
Futuhat on this subject, as illustrated in the long chapters 2 [1.51-91] and 198
[11.390-478],
7.9 The properties of matter
In apparent disagreement with physics, and also with common sense, Ibn ‘Arabi
paradoxically declares that most common properties of matter like weight,
1 84 The Single Monad model and its implications
density, transparency and softness are related to the perceiver and not to the
objects themselves [11.458.14]. There are only two exceptions, the colour and the
shape, where lbn ‘Arab! accepts that they can be related to something in the
object itself, though they may also be dependent on the perceiver like other
properties.
At a first glance this might be difficult to accept, especially since it clearly
contradicts our daily experience. However, we have already seen in section 2.6
that lbn ‘Arabi’s unique understanding of motion may be understood only on the
basis of the oneness of being and the re-creation principle that we explained in
section 5.6. Similarly, if we accept that objects and the whole world are continu-
ously created and re-created by the Single Monad, then we have to revise our
view about the structure of matter: for there actually exist (in this view) only the
individual substances or monads and their forms, so that other properties are
consequences and not intrinsic.
Regarding the structure of the cosmos, lbn ‘Arabi also mentions that the
structure of the higher world (i.e. the planets, spheres and stars) ‘is different
from what the cosmologists say, although what they say is based on (observa-
tional) proof(s); and it would have been possible for Allah to have it arranged
that way (as they say) - but He did not’ [II. 670. 7],
This statement - which might allude to such prevalent current astronomical
theories as the model of ‘epicycles’, or the assertion of a unique distinctive
‘element’ (‘quintessence’) constituting the higher spheres and planets - means
that he regards the models of the Cosmos devised by scientists and philosophers
as logically possible, but not true, solutions to the results given by astronomical
observations.
7.10 Dimensions of the unseen world
One of the most obvious differences between science and theology is that the
first speaks only about physical phenomena (including energy), while the latter
assumes the existence of spiritual or non-material beings, such as the jinn and
angels, and of various spiritual worlds, including those dimensions associated
with the Hereafter. Therefore one of the possibilities in order to bridge that gap
is to extrapolate modem laws of physics and cosmology to those unseen worlds.
Some recent scientific attempts have been made in this regard, and most postu-
late that the reason why we do not normally see those supra-natural worlds is
that they have higher dimensions (e.g. nine or ten dimensions). 10 However, there
are indications that lbn ‘Arabi sometimes suggests that angels and jinn are
‘physical’ or ‘natural’ creatures less advanced than humans. In that case, angels
and jinn have lower dimensions - one-dimensional (1-D) and two-dimensional
(2-D) respectively - while we humans, are three-dimensional (3-D) creatures,
who in the Hereafter (or perhaps even before) may be developed into four
dimensions. Here we are speaking about spatial dimensions alone.
Since we are now ordinarily 3-D creatures, we can not in general see jinn and
angels because our ordinary sensory tools are used to detect only 3-D phenom-
The Single Monad model and its implications 1 85
ena. In contrary to that, jinn and angels can see us - not because their senses are
capable of perceiving 3-D phenomena but because they rather perceive and inter-
act with our souls and intellects which are of their own nature (of 2-D and 1-D
respectively). Likewise jinn and humans can not in general see the angels.
However, it is possible for humans to cross over to the jinn and angel worlds by
transforming into 2-D and 1-D [1.168.20] and this is what happens to the seeker
at the beginning of his or her path and in the spiritual ascension, which is why
advanced human beings are able to speak and interact with spirits easily
[III.332.il], until they ultimately witnesses the Real Himself. But in order to
reach this final stage, the spiritual seeker must be ‘annihilated’ into 0-D, because
the Real can only be witnessed by His secret (‘the real through whom creation
takes place’) which He has implemented in everything [1.168.22, see also
III. 540. 33].
Dimensions play a very important role in modem cosmology and mathemat-
ics. There are real dimensions and abstract dimensions. In principle, we can -
mathematically - assign a dimension to any parameter of a specific function. For
example the weather at any point on the Earth is a function of many parameters
such as time, place, the nuclear reactions on the Sun, the amount of cloud in the
area, the direction of winds etc. Each one of these parameters can be considered
as an abstract dimension for the sake of simplifying the mathematical study of
the dependency of weather on these parameters or dimensions. Real dimensions,
on the other hand, are only those three dimensions of space (i.e. length, width,
depth; or x, y, z), and no more. Although time is considered as a real dimension
in Relativity, it is not a spatial dimension and so we shall not consider it as real
in this regard (see also section 2.5).
So here we shall speak only about the three real dimensions of space. In fact
those three dimensions make six (as Ibn ‘Arabi often points out), if we take into
account that each dimension has two directions. Those six dimensions or direc-
tions are: (up, down), (right, left), (front, back); or (-x, +x), (-y, +y ), (-z, +z).
I have to mention, however, that Ibn ‘Arab! never arranged the creations in
terms of dimensions as we are suggesting in this section; but this possibility is
quite evident from his various texts, and many of his ideas can be easily under-
stood on this basis, as we shall see shortly.
With regard to dimensions, existence can be divided into five categories, as
we shall explain in the remainder of this chapter:
7.10.1 The real
He is the Being of ‘zero dimension’ (0-D): i.e. of no dimensions, which means
He is independent of space and time. That is why Ibn ‘Arab! sometimes symbol-
ically indicates God as a dot or a point [III. 275], for example as the centre of the
circle of creation as we have seen in the cosmogonic diagram in Figure 7.1; also,
the dot that is used in many characters of the Arabic alphabet, especially the
letters ha ' (v) and nun (u). However, ‘the Real’ here may refer to Allah Himself
or also to the Greatest Element who is the Image of Real, or the ‘real through
186 The Single Monad model and its implications
Figure 7.1 0-D, a point. It actually has no length, width or breadth. This is what is
called a geometrical point.
whom creation takes place’ ( al-haqq al-makhluq bihi), and he is the true ‘Image
of God’, as we have discussed in the two preceding chapters. So when we speak
about the Real with regard to the creation and spatial dimensions, we usually
mean the Greatest Element rather than Allah, since Allah Himself, His Essence,
is beyond all descriptions including dimensions.
As we have seen in an earlier diagram in Figure 5.1, Ibn ‘Arabi symboli-
cally represents the world as a ‘circle’ whose centre is always the Real or real.
The abstract point in the centre is one unit: i.e. it can not be divided or frag-
mented, nor can it be even described because it has no dimensions. However, this
point faces the infinite multiplicity of the points in the circumference of the circle.
Moreover, each point of the circle is similar to or an image of the central point.
This is identical to the meaning of the hadith that Allah created the Human Being
(and the world, according to Ibn ‘Arabi) ‘on His own Image’ (see section 3.1).
Also each point in the circumference can be a centre to a new circle [III. 275], just
as everyone or everything has his or her own world, in his or her imagination.
Also, any point of the circumference can be considered the beginning of it and
also the end [1.259.24], so ‘ He is the First and the Last and Hidden (centre point)
and Manifest (circumference)’. And each line that goes out of the central point
reaches a point on the circumference. This means that everything originated from
the Real (in the centre) and it returns to Him (on the circumference) [11.538.26],
which can be understood as the cosmogonic meaning of the verse: ‘to Him you
return ’ (2:28) and to ‘ Him everything returns’’ (11:123). Finally, because all the
points are in essence a manifestation of the Real, therefore ‘the worm and the
First Intellect are equal with respect to the essence, but the difference appeared in
the form’ [III.452.33], Similarly, as Ibn ‘Arabi points out:
Since the lines (the radii) that go out from the Point in the centre of the
circle to the circumference that comes to exist through that Point are equal
to all parts of the circumference, so likewise the (creative, existentiating)
relation of the Real, the Exalted, to the totality of all existents is the same:
there is no change in that relation at all. So all things are looking to Him and
accepting from Him that (existence) which He bestows on them, just as the
parts of the circumference are facing the Point (in the centre).
[1.125.23]
The Single Monad model and its implications 1 87
Moreover, any object is composed of a number of points which are similar but
have different attributes; the object is the sum of those points. But we can not
say that the object is (nothing but) the (particular) point, nor we can say that it is
not the point. Similarly, the world is the sum of the manifestations of all the
divine Names of Allah, the Real, but we can not say that the world is the Real,
nor can we say that the world is not Him [III. 275. 32].
For Ibn ‘Arabi, the Real is creating the world by continuously and endlessly
manifesting Himself in different forms and forming the cosmos point by point
(in series as we explained above), including the perceived, perception and the
perceiver [11.484.22]. Therefore at any single instant of time (the ‘now’, or the
real existence, hal) there exists only Him. This is not like saying that the things
are Allah, ‘because He is He, and the things are the things’ [11.484.28], but they
are the manifestations of the Names of Allah. In this sense, as we have just seen,
‘every name in the world is His Name, not a name of other than Him; for it is the
Name of the Manifest in the locus of manifestation’ [11.122.14],
The identity or essence of each one of us (i.e. the individual soul) is a point in
the circle of Creation, and so is the identity of everything in the world. So we
can here clearly see the meaning of the verse: ‘ We shall show them Our signs on
the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it/He is
the ReaT (41:53), 11 which can be then considered the most obvious Qur’anic
basis of Ibn ‘Arabi’s understanding of the ‘oneness of being’. Also, since each
point of the circle is similar to the central point, ‘whoever knows himself knows
his Lord’ [1.328.31,11.298.30],
7.10.2 Angels
The angels are beings of one dimension ( 1 -D) and they are made of light ( Insha ’
al-Dawair. 27). Angels are the first creatures: the Pen himself is an angel, and
he is the first creature and everything else is ‘written’ by him in the Soul (the
Protected Tablet), which is two-dimensional as we shall see further below: so
their relationship is just like a normal pen and writing-board, in that they are
one- and two-dimensional respectively. Angels occur by the repeated manifesta-
tions of the Real (at least two subsequent manifestations); just as the line is com-
posed of at least two points [III. 276. 3]. Ibn ‘Arabi says:
The reality of the angel does not accept deviation, because he is the origin
of the straight line connecting the two nines (of the divine Source and its
human receptacles). 12 For bending (from that straight connection) is devia-
tion, and he (the angel) does not have any bending, but he goes back and
forth between the straight (creative) motion and the reverse motion (return-
ing from the creature to God). So he is precisely the subtle thread ( raqiqa :
connecting the Source and the creatures) itself.
[1.54.21]
On the other hand, there is strong evidence in Ibn ‘Arabi’s texts that some angels
indeed function as, among other things, forces of Nature: ‘They are called angels
188 The Single Monad model and its implications
( mala ’ika) because they are links, conductors that link the godly rules and divine
effects by material worlds because “ al-malak ” (the angel) in (Arabic) language
means the “force” and the “intensity” ’ ( Insha ’ al-Dawa ’ir. 27).
And he also says: ‘There is no place in heaven or Earth but that there is an
angel in it. And the Real continues to create angels from the (creative divine)
Breaths of the worlds, as long as they are still breathing’ [1.123.2].
It is also known in physics that there are four fundamental forces in nature,
which are: the force of gravity, the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear
force, and the strong nuclear force. Nature is built upon these four forces. Those
four forces can be conceived as manifestations of the four prime Archangels -
Malik, Jibrd ’ll (Gabriel), Mikha ’ll (Michael) and Israfil (Seraphiel) - because
Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that those four angels are the ones who bear the Throne ( al -
‘arsh). Although it is mentioned in Qur’an that ‘ eight shall, in that Day (of res-
urrection), bear above them the Throne of thy Lord’ (69:17), he asserts that
when this verse was recited before Muhammad, he said ‘and they are today (in
this world) four’ [1.148.2, III. 184.28, and also ‘Uqlat Al-Mustawfiz: 43-44], ‘and
tomorrow (in the Hereafter) they are going to be eight’ [1.149.29]. Ibn ‘Arabi
also explains that al-‘arsh (usually translated as ‘the throne’) in the Arabic
tongue refers to ‘the Kingdom’ in addition to ‘the Throne’ [1.147.33], so, if this
verse refers to the divine Kingdom, then its bearers or holders are those who are
in charge of its affairs, and these are like the four supports ( awtdd) who hold up
the house. For this reason we find that Ibn ‘Arabi also affirms that the four awtdd
(spiritual Pillars) by whom Allah sustains the Earth get their power from the
spirituality of these four angels [1.160.25, II. 7.1], though he mentions here
‘Azra’il (the angel of death) instead of Malik (the master of Gehenna). In the
Hereafter, he explains elsewhere, the three prophets Adam, Muhammad and
Ibrahim (Abraham) in addition to angel Ridwan (the Warehouser of Paradise)
shall also contribute, so those eight will be the holders or bearers of the Throne
or Kingdom in the Hereafter [1.148.11]. We shall see further below that this
helps explain why the Hereafter could be considered as four-dimensional (4-D).
Here Ibn ‘Arabi also shows that the Throne is the Kingdom, and that it is con-
fined in four things: body, spirit, food and state. So those eight sustainers of the
Throne are assigned the various duties as follows: ‘Adam and Seraphiel for
forms (for bodies), Gabriel and Muhammad for spirits, Michael and Abraham
for subsistence, and Malik and Ridwan are for threat and promise (i.e. the states
in Gehenna or Paradise)’ [1.148.3].
Therefore, if we want to compare those four angels who hold up the divine
Kingdom and the four elementary forces which operate in Nature, we can clearly
see, for example, a correspondence between gravity and Seraphiel, since both
operate upon the forms, the bodies. We can also see clear relations between the
electromagnetic force and Michael, because both are responsible for subsistence
and food, when we remember that all the food that we eat is in the end produced
by light and heat which are electromagnetic waves (forces) emitted by the Sun.
It is, however, not easy to establish the relation between Gabriel and Malik on
the one hand and the weak and strong nuclear forces on the other hand, but we
The Single Monad model and its implications 1 89
can mention that Gehenna is said in the Qur’an to be ‘ fuelled by stones’ (2:24,
66:6), and this could mean the nuclear energy that is available inside the atoms
for which those two nuclear forces are responsible.
On the other hand there are so many types of angels who also have different
states or levels (37:164) and different structures. Some of those various types are
mentioned in the Qur’an (37:1-3, 51:1-4, 77:1-5, 79:1-5 etc.), and Ibn ‘Arab!
talks about them in some detail very often in his writings [III. 445. 35-446. 6, and
also Inshd’ Al-Dawa’ir. 27]. And it is quite clear by studying these types that
they are assigned specific duties, just like the different forces in Nature (includ-
ing the elementary and other forces).
Therefore, our suggestion that angels are beings of 1-D appears justified
because such natural forces always operate in one dimension (they are also rep-
resented as vectors ►’ in physics and mathematics), though their effects might
appear in two or three dimensions as well.
Notice also that, just as the real (the Greatest Element) is 0-D and can be rep-
resented by a dot, the Single Monad is 1-D and can be represented by a line. In
letters, the letter al if is made by the flow ( sayalan ) of the dot. So also the Single
Monad is made by the flow (the repeated creative manifestation) of the Greatest
Element (see Figure 7.2).
7.10.3 The jinn
The jinn are beings of two dimensions (2-D) or four directions, and according to
traditional sources they are made of fire. Ibn ‘Arabi affirms that
The fire jinn got the four (of letters) because of the facts they are based on that
caused them to say as the Real, the Exalted, told: ‘ then I will approach them
from between their hands, from behind them, from their right side and from
their left side ’ (7:17), and then their facts are over, they have no further fifth
fact to seek through it further level, and you should be aware not to think that
this is possible for them that to have the height (up) and its counterpart (down)
by which the six directions are complete, because the (their) reality does not
permit that as we affirmed in the book Al-Mabadi wal-Ghayat.
[1.53.8]
It is evident, therefore, that jinn can move only in four directions: the plane or
the surface. They have no sense of height, so their space is a sub-space of ours,
I
Figure 7.2 1-D, a line segment. It has a length, and it is created by moving a point.
190 The Single Monad model and its implications
Figure 7.3 2-D, a unit square. It has length and width, and it is created by moving
the line segment in a direction perpendicular to the line on which the
segment lies.
and that is why we do not see them, they are too thin and tenuous, just like the
surface of a heat wave or flame. It is also noteworthy in this regard here that
Allah said in the Qur’an that the angels say: ‘ to Him (to Allah) belongs what is
between our hands and what is behind us and what is between thaf (19:64); so
He did not mention the sides as in the case of jinn. This therefore supports what
we said above about the angels being only 1-D.
In fact, just as the structure of angels is like our spirits, the jinn’s structure is
similar to the structure of our souls, as Ibn ‘Arabi affirms: ‘the inner (batin') of
the human being is in fact jinn’ [1.85.6], and also it is possible that the inner of
jinn is angels and the inner of angels is the real, which is again another form to
express the oneness of being.
7.10.4 Humans
Humans of course are beings of three dimensions (3-D) and they are made of
earth or clay. As we said above, humans can decompose into 2-D and 1-D so
that they may interact with jinn and angels, and they may also decompose into
0-D so that they may witness the Real, but they may not of course become like
the Real as God though they may become like the ‘real through whom creation
takes place’ who is the perfect Image of God, or the Perfect Human Being. And
as we’ve said that this is the aim of the Sufi; to decompose into 0-D, which
means to purify one’s self and get rid of all the earthly (3-D) attachments.
Figure 7.4 3-D, a unit cube. It has length, width and depth. It is created by moving
the square in a direction perpendicular to the plane. Notice that seven
motions are needed to make up the cube.
The Single Monad model and its implications 191
7.10.5 The hereafter
We can not talk too much about the Hereafter, because it has been mentioned
that it is different from what we may imagine [ Kanz : 39236, 39241], but as we
have mentioned above that the holders of the Throne or Kingdom are now four
and in the Hereafter they shall be eight. So it is possible that the Hereafter will
be four dimensional (4-D) because doubling the number of forces requires new
dimensions for the new forces to operate.
Moreover, we notice that our major senses relate to dimensions in the follow-
ing manner. Hearing requires only 1-D, because the propagation of sound waves
is received by the ear one bit at a time. Seeing, on the other hand, requires 2-D
because at any instance we may perceive a picture that occupies a surface. To
conceive 3-D, however, we need imagination because the 3-D space that we con-
ceive is built up as a result of the integration of 2-D pictures that we perceive
through the flow of time. We perceive 1-D only by hearing, and 2-D by seeing,
and we conceive 3-D, by imagination. So our thoughts, or imaginations, that we
have in our memory are indeed mostly 2-D pictures (but also 1-D sounds) but by
integrating them over time we conceive the volume. Thus, it is possible, and
plausible, that in the Hereafter we shall gain new faculty, more advanced than
imagination, that allow us to conceive of 4-D. In this case our thoughts will be
3-D as confirmed by Ibn ‘Arabi and many hadith that describe the Paradise. For
example Ibn ‘Arabi confirms that people in Paradise shall have the power of cre-
ating through the command ‘be’, just as Allah does in this world [ Al-Masail :
126, 1.84.21, 11.157.26, 11.440.35, 11.441.26, III.295.17], and he also affirms that
this is also attainable (by some people) in this world [. Al-Masail : 126,
III. 295. 14]. This is also called al-fi‘1 bil-himma (doing by intention or determi-
nation) [1.259.33],
On the other hand, and since we have seen that the Real is 0-D and that the
angels are the first repeated manifestation of the Real and so on, the jinn are
manifestations of the second order (in 2-D). Thus humans are more advanced
and complex that jinn because they are created by the manifestations of the Real
in the third order. Likewise, it is expected that the Hereafter will be the fourth-
order manifestation.
The Creation is done through the Pen who is writing the words of the All-
Merciful. This Pen started by writing the dot (absolute Spirits, including the real;
0-D) and then the angels by making a line (1-D), and he continued until a certain
term where he started another line, thus making a plane (2-D) and that is the cre-
ation of jinn. After that and at the certain term also, he started making new
planes, thus forming the volume (3-D) that we are in now. And eventually the
Pen will start, at a certain term ( ajal ), a new dimension to open the life in the
Hereafter (4-D). This ‘term’ is either the time of our death ( al-ajal) or possibly
the time of spiritual realization ( al-fateh ) which is also a kind of voluntary death
[IV. 354. 19] (Chittick 2002: 105-107). We have already seen in section 2.11
that Ibn ‘Arabi specified the starting times between those different terms (see
Figure 2.1).
192 The Single Monad model and its implications
It is also possible in Paradise that the Creation will continue, endlessly, into
higher dimensions («-D, where n is any integer number), more than four. Maybe
that is what it means when Ibn ‘Arabi says: ‘seeking ( al-suluk ; into Allah) is
always requested in this life and also in the Hereafter. For if there was a destiny,
it would have been possible to achieve (but there is no destiny)’ [ Al-Masa’il :
203], It is probably here where abstract mathematics - which can deal with any
number of dimensions and different types of topological spaces - has anticipated
this hypothetical structure of the world, whereas physicists up till now can not
conceive of more than three dimensions.
Finally, we must add that conceiving the world in this way according to the
dimensions will greatly help in any possible future computer simulations to test
the Single Monad model, because in this way we should be able to see whether
the current structure of stars and galaxies could have happened starting from the
initial conditions and rules that we described above and in Chapter 4 when we
discussed the actual flow of time.
Notes
1 Cosmology and time
1 The geocentric view considers the Earth to be in the centre of the universe, while the
heliocentric view considers the Sun to be in the centre. Modern cosmology, however,
asserts that the universe, being a closed space-time arena, does not have a centre; any
point may be considered a centre, just as any point on the surface of the Earth may be
considered a centre (with regard to the surface, not to the volume). So whether the
Earth or the Sun is in the centre of the universe is a valid question only with regard to
the solar system which was the known universe in early cosmology, but it is no longer
valid after discovering the galaxies and the huge distances between stars outside the
solar system. It is worth mentioning here that Ibn ‘Arab! clearly asserted that the uni-
verse does not have a centre [11.677.19].
2 For more infonnation about this subject see: Bienkowski (1972).
3 The redshift is the displacement (towards the red side) of the spectral lines of the light
emitted by stars when it is received on the Earth, and this is due to the high speed of
the motion of stars away from us. The amount of the shift towards the red is directly
proportional to the distance of the star away from us, and this is how distances to far
away stars and galaxies are calculated with a high degree of accuracy.
4 For more information about the principles of Quantum Cosmology see Linde (1990),
chapter 3.
5 For more information about Ibn ‘Arabi’s life and intellectual background see Addas
(1993) and Hirtenstein (1999).
6 For a full list of books and manuscripts attributed to Ibn ‘Arab!’ see: Yahya (1964). In
this book Othman Yahya mentions over nine hundred books (with about 1,395 titles)
attributed to Ibn ‘Arabi. Most of them however, as Yahya shows, are not really by
him, and also many of his genuine books are lost or not available. For a list of Ibn
‘Arabi’s printed works see appendix 1 in Hirtenstein (1999). See also the list of his
Arabic and translated works in the Bibliography.
7 In this hadith Allah says: ‘I was a hidden Treasure, so I loved to be known; so
I created the creatures/creation so that I might be known.’ This famous hadith
qudsi (‘divine saying’) is not found in standard hadith collections, but is widely
quoted by Sufis and especially Ibn ‘Arabi [11.112.20, 11.232.11, 11.310.20, 11.322.29,
11.330.21, 11.339.30, III.267.10, IV.428.7], Some scholars of hadith therefore consider
it a fabrication, but, as William Chittick pointed out, Ibn ‘Arabi believes that
this hadith ‘is sound on the basis of unveiling, but not established by way of trans-
mission (naql)' [11.399.28], See also SPK: 391: 250-252, and SDG: 21, 22, 70, 211,
329.
8 In this hadith the Prophet Muhammad was asked: ‘Where was our Lord before He
created the creatures?’ He answered: ‘He was in a Cloud (‘ ama’Y [Kanz: 1185,
29851], See also SPK: 125, and SDG: 118, 153, 360. Ibn ‘Arab! discusses this hadith
1 94 Notes
very often in the Futuhdf. [1.148.17, 1.215.33, 11.62.36, 11.150.21, II.310.3, 11.391.28,
III. 304. 5, III.506.5].
9 See: ‘The Language of the angels’, by Pierre Lory, from ‘The Breath of the All-
Merciful’ symposium held at Berkeley, 1998 (available as audio tape from the
Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society, Oxford).
10 Nature here actually means ‘the level of Nature’ (martabat al-tabi'a) (i.e. the four
foundational elements) and not nature in the physical sense, which is the material
world. Ibn ‘Arabi explains that the level of Nature does not have a separate physical
existence: ‘So (God) the Exalted estimated the level of nature that if it has (real) exist-
ence it would be below the Soul, so even though it does not really exist, it is wit-
nessed by the Real there. That is why He distinguished it and determined its level. It
is with regard to natural beings just like in regard to the divine Names: they can be
known and imagined, and their effects can appear and cannot be ignored, while in
general they do not have any (separate) essence. Likewise, (the level of) Nature gives
what is in its potential of sensible forms that are assigned to it and that have real exist-
ence, while it does not have real separate existence. So how strange is its state and
how high its effect!’ [11.430. 8],
1 1 From the Qur’anic verse ‘ the All-Merciful mounted (established His authority) on the
Throne ’ (20:5) and other similar verses such as ‘He created the Heavens and the
Earth in six days and then He mounted on the Throne ’ (7:54, and the same meaning
in other verses: 2:29, 10:3, 25:59, 32:4, 57:4). We shall see in Chapter 3 that, accord-
ing to Ibn ‘Arabi, the six directions of space were created by the process of God’s
‘mounting’ ( istiwa ’) on the Throne in six days from Sunday to Friday.
12 Abu Hamid Muhammad B. Muhammad al-Tusi Al-Ghazali (AH450-505/
ad 1058-1 111) outstanding Muslim theologian, jurist, thinker, mystic and religious
reformer who later pursued and systematically defended the path of Sufism. See also
El 2 , ‘Al-Ghazali’, II: 1038.
13 Ibn Rushd, Tahdfut Al-falasifa ( The Incoherence of the Philosophers) (1927), ed.
M. Bouyges with a summary in Latin, Beirut: n.p.. This is a controversial work of
theological refutation where al-Ghazali enumerated twenty maxims of the philoso-
phers that he found that they could not incontrovertibly demonstrate, as they had
claimed.
14 Abu al-Walid Ibn Rushd (ah 520-595/ad 1126-1198) was the chief judge of Seville
and a great philosopher known in the West as Averroes. There was no one higher than
him in the matter of legal ruling (fatwa ) for crucial issues. He was a top figure in the
history of both Islamic and Western philosophy and theology. He defended philoso-
phy against the Ash’arite theologians ( Mutakallimun ) led by al-Ghazali, against whom
he wrote his Tahdfut Al-Tahafut ( The Incoherence of the Incoherence), translated
from the Arabic with introduction and notes by Simon van den Bergh (Gibb Memo-
rial Trust, 1978). See also El 2 , ‘Ibn Rushd’, III: 909.
15 Muslim theology is the theology that is derived from the Qur’an and the Prophetic
traditions. Kalam (lit.: speaking) is the Islamic tradition of seeking theological princi-
ples through dialectic. The original scholars of kalam were recruited by the House of
Wisdom under the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad in the ninth century ad, but soon many
opposing kalam schools emerged such as Ash'arites and Mu‘tazilites.
16 Abu ‘All al-Husayn ibn Abdullah Ibn Sina (ah369-428/ad980-1037), known in the
West as Avicenna, was an important Muslim physician, scientist, mathematician and
philosopher. See also El 2 , ‘Ibn Sina’, III: 941.
17 Ibn Sina (1983): 68. See also ‘Ala’ al-Din ‘Abdul-Muta‘al (2003): 131.
18 Ibn Sina (1983): 72. See also Al-‘Ati (1993): 1 10.
19 Ibn Sina (1983): 74.
20 Ibn Sina (1938) Al-Najdt, ed. Muhyi al-Din S. al-Kurdi, 2nd ed., Cairo: n.p.: 117.
21 Named after its founding figure Abu al-Hasan al-Ash‘ari, this Sunni theological
school had its origin in the reaction against what they viewed as the excessive ration-
Notes 195
alism of the Mu‘tazila (a movement founded by Wasil Ibn ‘ Ata’ in the second century
AH/eighth century ad. The Ash‘arites insisted that reason must be subordinate to the
literal data of revelation. They accepted some of the cosmology of the Mu‘tazilites,
but put forward a nuanced rejection of their theological principles. See also El 2 3 4 5 , ‘Al-
Ash'ari, Abu ‘L-Hasan’, I: 694; ‘Ash‘ariyya’, I: 696; ‘Mu'tazila’, VII: 783.
22 Abu Yusuf Ya'qub Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (ah 185-256/ad 805-873) is considered the
historical ‘father’ of Islamic philosophy. He was also a scientist of high calibre, a
gifted mathematician, astronomer, physician and a geographer, as well as a talented
musician. See also El 2 , ‘Al-Kindi’, V: 122.
23 Al-Kindi (1950): 117.
24 Mohammed Ibn Zakariyya al-Razi (ah 25 1-3 13/ad 865-925). See also El 2 , ‘Al-Razi’,
VIII: 474.
25 Abu Nasr al-Farabi (ah259-339/ad 870-950) was one of the foremost Islamic philos-
ophers and logicians. See also El 2 , ‘Al-Farabi’, II: 778.
26 Euclidean geometry is based on the ideas of Euclid (c. 300 bc), who stated in his book
The Elements five postulates on which he based all his theorems. According to these
postulates, space is homogeneous like that which we feel on the Earth. In modem cos-
mology and with the high intensity gravity found near giant stars and galaxies, space
can no longer be treated as homogeneous, and therefore a new branch of geometry
(non-Euclidean geometry) has been introduced to take into account the curvature of
space-time. For information about Euclidean geometry, see Patrick (1986).
27 This is because of the ‘uncertainty (Heisenberg) principle’ which states that not all of
the physical parameters (e.g. position [x] and momentum [p]) of a system can be fully
determined at the same time. It is mathematically expressed as: Ax.Ap > h where h is
Planck’s constant, which is in the order of 6 x 1CT 34 erg-seconds.
28 Before the advent of Quantum Mechanics there was a long debate about the nature of
light, whether it is particles or waves. Some experiments (and theories) confirmed that
it is particles, while others confirmed that it is waves. Quantum Mechanics solved this
contradiction by suggesting that particles have wave properties and waves have parti-
cle properties. See Baierlein (1992).
2 General aspects of Ibn ‘ArabT’s concept of time and days
1 See note 10 in chapter I.
2 In the language of kalam theology, a ‘negative attribute’ ( sifa salbiyya) is an attribute
that is not a real description, but simply a negation of a purported description. See
also The Book of Eternity (Kitab Al-Azal) for Ibn ‘Arab!.
3 For more details about the ‘line-point’ and ‘time-now’ analogy, see Hasnaoui (1977):
50. See also Ibn 1 Arabi’s treatise of ‘Risala fi Asrar al-Dhat al-Ilahiyya’ in Rasa 'il Ibn
‘ Arab i (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Intishar al-Arabl, 2002-04), ed. Sa‘id ‘Abd al-Fattah,
Vol. I: 193-206 [201],
4 There are two closely related words in Arabic commonly used for the everyday senses
of ‘time’: zaman and zaman. They are basically used in the same contexts, and usually
Arabic dictionaries (such as Lisan al- ‘Arab (Beirut: Dar Sadir, n.d.), XIII: 200) do not
distinguish between them. Ibn ‘Arab! also seems to use these two words interchange-
ably in many places, although we can detect a unique pattern of use in the Futuhat : in
many places he uses zaman for the general meaning of time that has a span or dura-
tion, while he uses zaman to mean the current time or a specific time that is usually
short and defined, such as in the technical expression ‘the single time’ ( al-zaman al-
fard) [1.318.22, 11.82.22, IV.267], which is explained later in this chapter.
5 Al-jawhar literally means ‘the jewel’ but technically it means ‘the essence’. Ibn
‘Arab! took this technical usage from kalam theology. We will translate it as ‘the
monad’, which is the indivisible substance that is thought to constitute matter. We
will devote a full section to the monad in section 6.2.
196 Notes
6 Al- ‘arad - in this technical sense drawn from the usage of the kalam theologians - is
the actual appearance or the form of al-jawhar, or the form each monad wears in
order to appear in existence. The atomists, especially the Ash‘arite theologians,
asserted that the world is composed of substances and accidents (jawahir and ‘ arad)
and that substances remain while accidents always change. Ibn ‘Arab!, however,
employs the term more strictly than the Ash‘arites, since he says that everything that
we see always and constantly changes, though it may change into ‘similars’ or ‘like-
nesses’ (s. mithl), which is why we think that certain things are not changing
[III.452.24], He also asserts that this monad ( al-jawhar ) is not visible by itself, but
only appears wearing this form or the other. See also SPK: 97.
7 There are two different words in Arabic habitually used for the meaning of space: al-
makdn and al-hayyiz. Al-havyiz is more accurately used to refer to the abstraction of
three-dimensional space, while al-makan in fact refers to ‘the place’ rather than space.
Ibn ‘Arab! himself sometimes uses both of these two words to mean space, but in one
passage he clearly defines them: ‘ al-makan is what the objects rest on, and not in, it;
for if they were in it, these would be al-ahydz (s. hayyiz, space), not al-makan (place)’
[11.458. 3],
8 Al-Afrad min al-rijdl: al-afrad (‘the Solitary Ones’) are a group of the highest spiritual
Sages who are outside the circle of the spiritual Pole ( al-Qutb ); al-Khadir (lit. ‘the
green man’) is one of them [II. 19.9]; and ‘they are not governed by the circle of the
Pole and he has no rule over them, but rather they are as complete as himself
[III. 137. 12], In Ibn ‘Arabi’s technical usage, al-rijdl (‘the True Men’) refers not at all
to a gender but to the fully accomplished spiritual sages or ‘true Rnowers’ ( ‘urafa j.
See also Al-Mu jam Al-Sufi: 515-521.
9 See chapter 371 of the Futiihat [III. 416] for a detailed account of the creation scenario
of both the physical and intelligible worlds as seen by Ibn ‘Arabi. Also in chapter 7 of
the Futiihat [1.121] Ibn ‘Arab! gives many details about the different stages of creat-
ing the natural or physical world in time; however the numbers that he gives there fall
far short of the modem well-established scientific results.
10 Ibn ‘Arab! explains this in detail at the beginning of the Futiihat, as he was discussing
the ‘special people of Allah’. He discusses this doctrine there under many issues
( masa ’il) in which he summarizes the relations between the Real, the world and non-
existence. See his introduction in the Futiihat [1.41—47]. Ibn ‘Arab! also wrote these
issues and much more in Kitab Al-Masa’il which is also known as 'Aqidat ahl al-
ikhtisas, ‘the doctrine of the special people (of Allah)’, see the Bibliography.
1 1 When Ibn ‘Arab! uses this term ‘in charge of moving’ to describe the active force
here, he has in mind his famous concept that the world (where bodies and objects
move) is like a super-human ( insan kabir) [III. 11. 19], where all physical motions are
due to this active force of the Universal Soul, and all noetic changes are due to Its
intellective force.
12 On the basis of the hadith ‘the Pedestal ( al-kursi ) is the place of the two feet’ [Kanz:
1683], Ibn ‘Arab! asserts that the ‘foot’ in question is the divine ‘constancy’ ( thubit )
and the ‘two feet’ that are ascribed to the All-Merciful, the most Glorious, refer to
‘the foot of compulsion’ ( qadam al-jabr) and ‘the foot of choice’ ( qadam al-ikhtiydr)
[III.432.23], Ibn ‘Arabi showed that Allah’s, the All-Merciful's, Word (in the Throne)
is One (all mercy), but by the swinging (tadalli) of these two feet of compulsion and
choice on the Pedestal, the Word divided into two, [11.438.27], and this distinction
between compulsion and choice caused the emergence of the world of command
( ‘alam al-amr) and the world of creation ( ‘alam al-khalq), of the (divine) ban and the
order, obedience and the disobedience, and the Garden and the Fire (Gehenna), but all
this is from the same single divine root of Mercy that is the attribute of the All-
Merciful Who ‘ mounted on the Throne’ ( al-rahmdn ‘ala al-'arsh istawa, 20:5) [IV
274.25], Then Ibn ‘Arab! also relates this same distinction to the symbolism of the
daytime and night, where he says that, because the Word above the Pedestal is one, it
Notes 197
is all daytime (light) there, but below the Pedestal it is daytime and night [III.202.31].
See also section 2.13.
13 For more detail about this subject, see Minkowski (1923) and Hinton and Rucker (1980).
14 See Muhyi ad-Din al-Tu‘aymi (ed.) (1994) Mawsu’at Al-Isra’ wa’l-Mi'raj, Beirut:
Dar al-Hilal. This book contains six important treatises written by prominent early
and classical Muslim scholars, such as Ibn ‘Abbas, al-Qushayri and al-Suyuti, about
the occasion of the Prophet’s Isra ’ and Mi’raj.
15 For a full translation and study of related passages see ‘Ibn ‘Arabi’s Spiritual Ascen-
sion’ in Chittick (2002): 201-230.
16 This book has been published many times but the most notable critical edition is pub-
lished by Su‘ad al-Hakim in 1988 (Beirut: Dandarah).
17 Abu Ishaq al-Nu‘mam al-Shafi‘i, Al-Siraj Al-Wahhaj ft Haqa’iq Al-Isra’ wa 'l-Mi‘raj\
in Mawsu’at Al-Isra’ wa’I-Mi'raj (note 14 above): 53—1 14 (p. 58).
18 See the short chapters 244 and 245 of the Futiihat [11.543-544], where Ibn ‘Arabi
explains these notions of spiritual ‘absence’ ( ghayba ) and ‘presence’ (hudur).
19 Nath (or al-shartayn : the two signs of Aries), Butayn (the belly of Aries) and Thurayya
(Pleiades) are houses of the Moon.
3 The significance of the divine week and its seven days
1 Sandbil, sunbulat (s. sunbula), the term used in the Qur’anic account of Pharaoh’s
dream interpreted by Joseph (12:43), and also in the promised reward of charity
(zakat) (1:261).
2 This is one of the 12 zodiacal signs, also called al- ‘Azrd (the Virgin).
3 He asserts later in this same chapter that ‘when the orbs rotated . . . and when the
(celestial) rule went back to Virgo, the human composition appeared “fry the specific
determination of the All-Mighty, the All-Knower ( taqdir al- ‘Aziz al- ‘Alim 41:12 [also:
6:96, 36:38])’” [chapter 60, 1.294.8], Ibn ‘Arabi then explains [chapter 60, 1.294.10]
that the time of the ruling of Virgo is 7,000 years, after which the ruling task is
handed over to Libra (‘the Balance’, representing the eschatological time of divine
justice at the final Rising). In this chapter, however, he first takes pains to explain that
those ruling spirits are only angelic servants (of God) doing their jobs, and not sepa-
rate deities as the pagans had believed; so the command is all to Allah and there is no
‘sharing’ with Him.
4 This is because Virgo, as Ibn ‘Arabi goes on to explain, has the number ‘seven’, but
also has its multiples: seven, 70, 700:
That is why Allah - since He created us in Virgo - multiplied our reward as He
said: ‘The likeness of those who spend their wealth in Allah’s way is as the like-
ness of a grain which growth seven ears, in every ear a hundred grains. Allah
gives increase manifold to whom He will ’ (2:261) - but always multiples of seven.
[1.294.15]
5 To remove any confusion, ‘Day(s)’ and ‘Week’ (with capitals) are used to refer to the
actual ‘cosmic’ or ‘divine’ Days and Week (of Creation) - not to the many relative,
astronomical days and weeks defined by the different relative motions of different
heavenly bodies. We have already mentioned the meaning of these divine ‘Days’ in
section 2.15, but the different types of cosmic Days will be discussed in more detail in
the following chapter.
6 See Herodotus: The Histories, ed. Walter Blanco, Jennifer T. Roperts, trans. Walter
Blanco (New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992), 2.82 (fifth century bc).
7 Sunday is the first day of the week according to the Jewish method of reckoning, but
for Christians it began to take the place of the Jewish Sabbath in Apostolic times.
8 In one hadith [Kanz: 15120] which we shall translate below, the Prophet Muhammad
clearly specified that Allah started the Creation on Sunday.
198 Notes
9 See also Ibn ‘Arabi’s book Al-Asfar (the Journeys) in Rasa ’il Ibn Arab i (Beirut: Dar
Iliya’ al-Turath al-‘Arabi, n.d.). pp. 12-15. This book was edited and translated into
French by Denis Gril (1994).
10 See also the long passage translated in section 2.12 where Ibn ‘Arabi defines the dif-
ferent timing periods including the solar month and year.
1 1 The Babylonians originally used a combination solar-lunar calendar like the one
Muslims use nowadays (i.e. the Hijri Calendar with varying 29/30-day months),
though they made adjustments from time to time to make it fit with motion of the Sun.
Later (during the reign of the Chaldean king Nabonassar, 747-734 bc), the Babylo-
nian astronomers switched to the 30-day, 12-month calendar, again making adjust-
ments for the actual 365-day year (Parise 1982: 5).
12 For details about the concepts of sainthood ( walaya ) and prophethood ( nubuwwa ) and
the hierarchy of awliya’ see Chodkiewicz (1993b).
13 Mudawi Al-Kulum is the name of the Single Pole that is the spirit of the Prophet
Muhammad even before creating humankind when Adam was still ‘between water
and soil’, and to this spirit different manifestations in the world where the ‘ Pole of
Time ’ is his perfect manifestation, but he is also manifested in the ‘ Solitary Ones (al-
Afrady and in the ‘ Seal of Sainthood’ , both the Muhammadan Sainthood (who is Ibn
‘Arabi himself) and General Sainthood (who is Jesus) [1.151.26], And he was called
Mudawi Al-Kulum because he is so kind and polite with his friends; when he wants to
draw the attention of one of them to a specific issue, he kindly hides that from others
in guard for him just as Jacob asked Joseph to keep his vision secret and not to tell it
to his brothers [1.153.19],
14 The ambiguities in the translation here are quite intentional: God sees Himself
reflected in (both mirrors of) creation and Adam; Adam sees himself/God in the
mirror(s) of himself and creation; and finally God (as Spirit) sees what Adam sees.
See chapter 1 of the Fusus Al-Hikam for the full elaboration of the teaching summa-
rized here in a single short Arabic phrase.
15 See A. Kashani’s well-known Tafsir Ibn Arabi, published by many publishers, for
example Beirut: Dar Sadir, 2002, vol. I: 245, vol. II: 571.
16 This English word here fits very well in this meaning for the Arabic word ‘yusabbihiT
(n. tasbih: magnification) and probably conveys the meaning here more clearly than
the more abstract Arabic word, because at the end the process of creation, according
to Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, is a ‘multiplication’ of the Oneness of Allah, and a ‘magnifica-
tion’ (manifestation) of His ‘absolute Unseen’ dimension ( al-ghayb al-mutlaq). This
magnification started with the creation of Angels, and then proceeded with the crea-
tion of the jinn who were given extra privilege and duties, because they are commis-
sioned servants, while the perfection (of the theomorphic Image) was only given fully
to the (perfect) Human Being ( insan ) who is the Khalifa (the ‘vice-gerent’ of Allah).
17 This was mentioned in one long hadith which describes the sequence of creation accord-
ing to week days (see al-Mustadrak ‘ala al-Sahihayn by Mohamed al-Nisaburi (Dar Al-
Kutub Al-Tlmiyya: Beirut, n.d), vol. II: 593, no. 3996/7). See also section 7.10.
1 8 Ibn ‘Arabi indicates in many places that both the world and the Perfect Human Being
work in the same way, which is why he calls the world the ‘Great Human Being’ (al-
insan al-kabir) and the Human Being the ‘microcosm’ ( al - ‘alam al-saghir) [III. 1 1 . 1 8] .
See also Al-Mujam Al-Sufi: 168-170, and SPK: pp. 4, 16, 30, 107, 136, 276, 282,
297, and also SDG: 6, 8, 28, 35, 37, 175, 189, 259, 264, 274, 288, 332, 339, 348,
360-363. See also section 3.2 for more analogies between the creation of the world
and embryology.
4 The actual flow of time
1 Mathematically we can divide the circle into 360 degrees, 400 grads, 2n radians or
indeed to any number of units. Ibn ‘Arabi, however, affirms that the 360-degree system
Notes 199
has a divine origin, which is the total number of prime divine forms of knowing ( ‘ilm)
that the Universal Intellect (the ‘Higher Pen’) was taught by the ‘Greatest Element’
(Nun) [1.295.8, alluding to the standard cosmological interpretation of the Qur’anic
symbols at 68:1], Also in Al-Tanazzulat Al-Layliyva ft Al-Ahkam Al-Ilahiyya, he men-
tioned on page 35 that the Intellect has 360 faces towards the divine Presence (Al-
Hadra Al-Ilahiyya).
2 For the Arabs, whom Ibn ‘Arabi follows on this point, the night-time of a particular
day is that which precedes the daytime of that day, and not the night that follows that
daytime. See Ayyam Al-Sha'n: 4. See also section 2.14.
3 In appendix A in their study of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s book: Ayyam Al-Sha ’n, The Seven Days of
the Heart (p. 149), Pablo Beneito and Steven Hirtenstein translated ayyam al-takwir ’
as ‘the cyclical days’ and translated the Qur’anic verb yukawwiru as ‘(He) wraps’.
However, I prefer to use the term ‘circulate’ to emphasize the meaning that the day-
times and the night-times go around each other in a circle, and that they both (together)
encircle the Earth. This type of day (the circulated day) is also the normal, observable
type of day that ‘circulated’ amongst us, to differentiate from the other two types that
we shall see below.
4 This is mentioned in Tafsir Ibn Arabi, vol. I: 245, and vol. II: 571. This book is attrib-
uted to Ibn ‘Arabi by its modem publisher, but most scholars agree that it was written
by the later Iranian philosopher Al-Qashani.
5 The galactic equator is the intersection of the plane of the Milky Way with the celestial
sphere.
6 It is not very clear here what does he mean by ‘the middle’, and he also used the same
expression in the same context right in his introduction to the Futiihat.
7 See also The Seven Days of the Heart : 157-159, where Pablo Beneito and Steven
Hirtenstein gave in appendix A and B a good study of Kitab Ayyam Al-Sha ’n. They
found that the number of contribution for all of the seven Days from all the seven
heavens should sum up to 24, which they interpreted as the 24 hours of the day. There-
fore, because not all the data are found in the source, they had to deduce the missing
slots on the basis of this assumption.
8 As of 1956, the length of a second has been freed from the vagaries of the
Earth’s motion, and is now defined by the Systeme International d’Unites as equal to
‘the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition
between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium- 133 atom in
zero magnetic field’. This means that the values for these conventional units of
time are no longer tied to the motion of the Earth, and instead are tied to innate measur-
able properties of matter. Thus the minute, hour, day and even the average ‘tropical’
year are defined as exactly 60; 3,600; 86,400; and 31,556,925.9747 seconds
respectively.
9 In mathematics: 10~* denotes 1/10*. For example 10~ 3 is 1/10 3 or 1/1000, or one-thou-
sandth. As we have seen in section 1.9, there are some speculations that the shortest
possible time is in fact lO^ 13 seconds, which is called Planck’s time. The debate is still
going on, and the issue of the quantization of time is not yet finally settled.
5 Unicity and multiplicity
1 It is believed that Ibn ‘Arabi entered the spiritual path well before the age of 20. He
mentioned in the Futuhdt [11.425.13] that he entered ‘this path’ in the year ah 580
(ad 11 84), and he was bom in ah 560 (ad 1165) (Austin 1971: 23). Other scholars
argue that this was in ad 1182 or even earlier (Hirtenstein 1999: 51-60).
2 It can be argued that the words ‘no’ or ‘not yes’ do not have a stand-alone signifi-
cance, especially when we think about existence. ‘No’ only indicates the opposite of
‘Yes’, because ‘No’ in this sense means ‘non-existence’ which is nothing; it is only
the absence or negation of existence. This also has its pararells in digital electronics
200 Notes
where the signal has two states; either there is a signal or not, which is translated as
Yes and No or 1 and 0 respectively. But because the ‘0’ is ‘nothing’, we are left with
only the ‘ 1 ’ ; this ‘ 1 ’ either exists or not.
3 In his short book Ma la Yu'awwal ‘Alayhi (What can not be relied upon) (in Rasa’il
Ibn ‘Arabi, vol. I, treatise 16: 2) and in his famous chapter 63 of the Futuhat , Ibn
‘Arabi repeatedly affirms that true visions (‘visionary unveiling’, kashf suwari) are
always correct, while mistakes actually may come from the individual’s false inter-
pretation, not from the vision itself. There are, however three kinds of spiritual
visions: the ‘good vision’ is from Allah; ‘psychological reflections’ from the soul; and
‘nightmares’ from Shaytan. See also chapter 188 of the Futuhat, as well as our study
of the Sura of Joseph: Yousef (1999): 227-232.
4 Right at the first page of the Introduction to the Futuhat , Ibn ‘Arabi divides knowl-
edge into three categories: (1) Logical (ratiocinative) knowledge ( ‘ilm al- ‘aql)\ (2) the
knowledge of inner experiential states (‘ilm al-ahwaPy, and (3) the ‘(inspired) knowl-
edge of (spiritual) secrets’ (‘ilm al-‘asrar). The knowledge of states is obtained only
through direct experiential ‘taste’ (dhawq), while the knowledge of secrets is gener-
ally beyond the grasp of the intellect, though some of it becomes logical after being
explained, but the intellect alone could not attain it [1.31.9],
5 Ibn ‘Arabi quotes this expression and comments on it very often in his books, and he
ascribes it to al-hakim (‘the philosopher-sage’) [11.458.20], Though it is not very clear
who he exactly means by al-hakim, it is possible that he refers to Plotinus, who was
known in several Arabic translations of his writings as ‘the Greek sage’ (al-hakim al-
vunani). On the basis of Davidson (1992), William Chittick asserts that this maxim
was apparently first used by Avicenna (SDG: 17). This maxim is certainly the basis of
Avicenna’s cosmological schema of emanationism (favd) [see: EP, ‘Emanationism’,
I: 473^174, and also The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge University
Press, 1995, ed. Robert Audi): 258, 604-606, 714], and it was possibly used by early
Christians as the basis of the concept of the holy Trinity. Ibn ‘Arabi generally disa-
grees with this proposition especially when speaking about Allah as the One Who
created the manyness of the world.
6 Ibn ‘Arabi uses two distinct term with regards to the existence of creatures with rela-
tion to God; ‘withness’ (ma'aiyya) and ‘at-ness’ ( ‘indiyya). The first refers to the pres-
ence of God with all things after they are created (57:4, 58:7), while the first indicates
all things were (‘determined’) with God even before they come into real existence.
See also SDG: 35, 37, 45, 88, 137, 170, 171, 179, 180, 297, SPK: 72, 76, 125, 181,
183, 216, 249, 302, 313, 327, 364-366, 380.
7 Ibn ‘Arabi often elaborates on the lofty rank of the ‘people of God’ (ahl Allah) who
are the ‘true knowers’ (al-muhaqqiquri), also sometimes referred to as the ‘the people
of Qur’an’ alluding to a famous hadith [ Kanz : 2277, 2278, 2279, 2342, 4038, etc.]
which Ibn ‘Arabi often quotes or paraphrases [11.299.18, 1.352.27, 1.372.14, 1.510.12,
III. 103.34, III. 121. 35],
8 In the original printed text (followed in the standard later Cairo and Beirut reprintings
used here), this rare long comment is described as ‘a note by Sidi ‘Abd al-Qadir [al-
Jaza’iri], transcribed from his own handwriting’.
9 For details about the differences between the divine Names al-Wahid and al-Ahad see
Al-Masa’il : 139. And also see Ibn ‘Arabi’s descriptions of these Attributes and
all other divine Attributes in the long chapter 558 [IV. 196-326; see in particular
IV. 293-294], Ibn ‘Arabi also wrote a dedicated book called Kitab Al-Ahadiyya; see
the Bibliography. See also SDK: 25, 36, 58, 90, 235, 237, 244-245, 278, 349, 364.
10 See also Tawajjuhat Al-Huruf (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qahira, n.d.): 17. This small book
includes also the prayer Al-Dawr Al- ‘Ala or Flizb al- Wiqdyah li man Arada al- Walaya
and a few other short treatises, including Al-Salawat Al-Favdiyya.
11 See also the Futiihdt [1.109.3, 1.125.28, 1.216.13, 1.228.13, 1.263.19, 1.313.29,
1.643.33, III.74.2, III.398.15, etc.].
Notes 201
12 This famous saying (al-'ajz ‘an dark al-idraki idrak) is often quoted by Sufi authors
in support of what we have just explained, especially by Ibn ‘Arabi [1.51.7, 1.92.1,
1.95.2, 1.126.14, 1.271.6, 1.290.2, II.170.8, 11.619.35, 11.641.12, III.132.35, III.371.21,
III. 555. 17, IV.43.5, IV.283.16], and it is usually attributed to Abu Bakr al-Siddiq.
13 In his book Al-Masd’il (The Issues), which contains over 230 philosophical issues,
Ibn ‘Arabi showed that the divine Names and Attributes are the first multiplicity that
occurred in the Existence. See issue (Mas ’ala) no. 94 in this book.
14 Ibn ‘Arabi’s profound view of creation is essentially based on the concept of ‘the
Breath of the All-Merciful’; he explains the world and everything in it through this
concept. He mentioned and explained it in the Futuhat and other books more often
than anything else. See in the Futuhat [1.97.22, 1.152.13, 1.168.15, 1.185.16,
I. 263-270, 1.272-274, II.172.5, 11.181.12, 11.293.30, 11.310.21, 11.390.18] and
throughout the long chapter 198 [11.390-478], as well as [III.269.22, III. 279. 18,
III. 429. 34, III.443. 12, III.459.21, III.465.27, III.505.9, III.524.25, IV.65.32,
IV. 200.11, IV.2 11.27, IV.256.24, IV.330.22], to mention some examples. We shall
see below (section 7.8) that this concept of the Breath of the All-Merciful is indeed
the theological and cosmological equivalent of the modem physics theory of Super-
strings introduced in the 1980s.
15 This book (OY no. 515; listed in Ibn ‘Arabi’s own lists of his writings) is called Al-
Muthallathat Al- Warida fi Al-Qur ’an Al-Karim.
16 See for example: Lyman Abbott, A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge, 1875: 944.
See also Hopkins (1930), chapter XX: The Christian Trinity, chapter XVII: The Triad,
chapter XVIII: The Hindu Trinity, chapter XIX: The Buddhistic Trinity.
17 In Arabic grammatical language, any group of two is called muthanna (dual), while
the term ‘plural’ is reserved for groups of at least three members.
18 Ibn ‘Arabi often makes such symbolic analogies (mudahat) between the internal (psy-
chological) and external (cosmological) realities. Thus he calls the cosmos the ‘Great
Human Being’ (al-lnsan al-Kabir) and the human being the ‘micro-cosmos (al-'Alam
al-Saghir) [11.150.26, III. 11.17]. He also says that this knowledge that the world is a
Great Human Being and that the human being is its ‘Summary’ form was given by
Idris (Mudawi al-Kuliim) [1.153.21], See also Ibn ‘Arabi’s al-Tadbirat al-Ilahiyya,
where he explains these symbolic analogies at length. In another highly symbolic
early book, the Anqa ’ Mughrib, he makes similar analogies between Human Being
and the divine Names. For a full translation and critical study see Elmore (2000).
19 It is most likely that this term was first used by Ibn Taymiyya himself, although he
criticized Ibn ‘Arabi for that. See Madhkur (1969): 365-380 [370], See also Al-
Mujam Al-Sufi: 1145-1155, and SDK: 79.
20 Ibn ‘Arabi alludes here, among other things, to the Qur’anic accounts of the inbreath-
ing of the Spirit into Adam: ‘So, when I have made him and breathed into him of My
Spirit ’ (15:29, 38:72).
2 1 This is also evident in physics, where it is known that the difference between colours
is due to the shorter or longer wavelength of the electromagnetic waves that constitute
light. The red colour has a specific wavelength, and the blue colour for example has
another distinctive (range of) wavelength(s). Although we call it a colour, there is no
wavelength for a colour that is called ‘black’ or ‘dark’: it is simply the absence of any
light-waves.
22 For more details about this subject see Ormsby (1984).
23 See Ibn ‘Arabi’s discussions of this conception in the Futuhat [11.168.23, 11.343.28,
II. 379. 9, 11.444.16, 11.501. 4, III.343.23, 111.471.13],
24 See Ibn ‘Arabi’s discussions in the Futuhat [1.42.21, 1.204.12, 1.284.32, 1.680.7,
III. 275. 32, IV.46.6, IV.129.31, IV.228.12, IV.236.15],
25 See The Wisdom of the Prophets (Fusus Al-Hikam), translated from Arabic into
French with notes by Titus Burckhardt; translated from French into English by Angela
Culme-Seymour (TAJ Company: New Delhi, revised edition 1984): 32.
202 Notes
26 See for example in the Futuhat [1.79.5, 1.461.25, 1.735.17, 11.356.26, 11.372.23,
11.451.33, 11.471.32, 11.554.18, III.105.27, III.199.il, III.288.16, III.362.16, IV.9.9,
IV. 320. 5, IV. 343. 16, IV.367.18, IV.379.1, IV.397.22, IV.418.20],
6 The Single Monad model of the cosmos
1 The ‘one’ at the end of the sentence refers to the Single Monad ( al-jawhar al-fard),
and not likely to the divine Name al-Ahad (‘The One/Unique’), because this Name is
never manifested on the level of multiplicity where knowledge normally is actualized.
Ibn ‘Arabi always shows that multiplicity is ultimately related to the Name al-Wahid
(the Alone, the Only One) and not to al-Ahad, because with al-Ahad no other entity
may exist in order to know Him.
2 See EP, ‘Monad and Monadology’, vol. 5: 361-363.
3 See Shajarat Al-Kawn (Dar al-Mahabba: Damascus, 2003), ed. ‘Abd al-Rahim
Mardini: 39.
4 This important note can be used to give more details and extensions about the ‘the
Single Monad model of the Cosmos’ that we discuss in this chapter. Ibn ‘Arabi is
describing the three main jobs or motions of the Intellect in creating the world includ-
ing himself and also his acceptance of knowledge from his Lord.
5 In Arabic grammar when two consonant characters meet, one of them is omitted,
usually the vowel-like ‘incomplete letters’. In this case the imperative of ^Yjls
( yaruhu ) is c'/j (ruh) so because both the wdw and the ha are consonants, the wdw
that is a vowel is omitted and the result is ( ruh ).
6 Ibn ‘Arabi quotes this name after Abu al-Hakim Bin Barrajan (d. 536/1 141) in Al-Tad-
birat Al-Ilahiyya: 90.
7 See Hawking (1994).
8 Here Ibn ‘Arab! is using the term al-jawhar al-fard in its original sense in the physics
of kalam, to refer to the ‘atom’ or the simplest physical substance, whose compounds
form natural bodies (jism ). This is the opposite extreme from the all-encompassing
creative Single Monad.
9 It has to be noticed, however, that, for Ibn ‘Arabi, this ‘al-haqq al-makhluq bihi’ is not
other than the Real, Allah, but he is also not Allah; he is the most perfect manifesta-
tion of Allah. See also Chapter 5 (especially section 5.3). See ‘Uqlat Al-Mustawfiz:
59. See also Al-Mujam Al-Sufi: 828.
10 See also Chittick, SDK: 134 [The Universal Reality], In other related hadith some
other realities are said to be the ‘first-created’ such as the Intellect \Kanz: 7057], the
Pen [Kanz: 597, 15116] or ‘the Muhammadan Light’, etc. There is no contradiction in
these hadith because those are just different names of the same reality as we discussed
in section 6.3.
1 1 See chapter 73 of the Futuhat [II. 2-39] where Ibn ‘Arabi explains and lists the differ-
ent groups of saints, and especially the extensive summary and analysis of that long
chapter and related materials found in Chodkiewicz (1993).
12 As we have seen in section 5.3, Ibn ‘Arabi argues that number one is the primordial
basis of all other numbers, just as alif is the foundation of all the letters. See also
[11.122.19, and Al-Masa 'll: 109],
13 This divine Name is usually taken in the meaning of ‘the Most-Kind’, which is a pos-
sible meaning in relation to His Creation: ‘He is the Most-Kind with His servants’
(42:19). Ibn ‘Arabi here, however, emphasizes the general meaning of latdfa which
means fineness.
14 Insdn: i.e. here and throughout this book, the immortal spiritual reality and dimension
of people - which is the reflection of the cosmic First Intellect, or ‘Perfect Human
Being’; and not their passing material, mortal-animal ‘nature’ ( bashar ).
15 Ibn ‘Arabi spends a good deal of the first chapter of the Futuhat trying to explain this
mysterious point regarding the subjective experience and the actual reality offand’.
Notes 203
He explains that, in making the circle, the compass returns to the starting point
[1.48.33], until he concludes: ‘if they (the seekers of the Real) knew (the goal of their
search) they would not have moved from their place’ [1.49.1], and ‘so he (the seeker)
would be sad on arriving at what he has (earlier) left behind - but he would be happy
for the secrets that he gained on the way! ’ [1.49. 14]
16 See also Yousef (2006): 422.
17 See Al-Salawat Al-Faydiyva, published together with some other short treatises and
prayers, for example in Tawajjuhdt Al -Huruf (Maktabat al-Qahira: Cairo, n.d.).
18 I.e. as my ultimate identity which is as the Perfect Human Being, not as You (the tran-
scendent Real), because this is impossible as we said above. This is the state of spirit-
ual ‘abolishment’ ( mahw ) of the ego, like the momentary disappearance of the shadow
at noontime, as we have seen above.
19 The pronoun here (translated as ‘its’) is usually interpreted by many scholars so that it
refers to Allah. Ibn ‘Arabi, however, affirms that it indeed refers to the thing in ‘eve-
rything’ [11.110.25, 11.313.16, III.255.22], However, both cases are plausible
[IV.417.18], if we take into account what we have mentioned in Chapter 5 that the
things are not other than Him, and that the ‘face’ of a thing is its essential reality [as
Ibn ‘Arabi argues at 1.181.19, 1.306.12, 1.433.36, 11.182.17, 11.632.34, IV.417.18], So
the things in reality are not other than Allah, but the forms that we see are all perisha-
ble, and at the end there remains only His Face in everything. So this verse is indeed
another clear expression of the oneness of being.
20 See Tawajjuhdt al-Huruf. 26.
21 Like the English pun, Ibn ‘Arabi frequently plays with the fact that the same Arabic
word ( ‘ayn) refers at once to the observing ‘eye’, the concrete individual entity (of the
observer), and to their ultimate Source. See also Kitab Al-Azal: 9.
7 The Single Monad model and its implications for modern physics
1 Al-sirr literally means ‘the secret’, but Sufis use it to refer to the innermost spiritual
core of the heart ( qalb ), the ‘heart of the heart’. It was said that the sirr also has a sirr,
and so on down to seven levels. For Ibn ‘Arabi, the Spirit ( riih ) is the third level after
the heart and the sirr, but also the Spirit has its ‘secret’ dimension, and this sirr also
has a sirr which is called sirr al-sirr (‘the secret of the secret’ ) [1. 117.8], Ultimately it
is this final Sirr that is directly connected with the Real (the wajh al-khass discussed
in several passages in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6).
2 In 1999 Ahmed Zewail was awarded the Nobel Prize ‘for showing that it is possible
with rapid laser technique to see how atoms in a molecule move during a chemical
reaction’ (see Press Release, The 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Kungl. Vetenskap-
sakademien, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 12 October 1999). This dis-
covery is known as femtochemistry, where molecules are watched over a very short
time-scale with Femto-second resolution. The Femto-second resolution (1 fs = 1CL 7 * * * * * * * 15 s)
is the ultimate achievement to date for studies of the dynamics of the chemical bond
at the atomic level. On this time-scale, matter wave packets (particle-type) can be
created and their coherent evolution as a single-molecule trajectory can be observed
(Zewail 1990: 40-46).
3 The flickering is the variation (and discontinuity) in light intensity which is normally
seen on some computer monitors. As we have all observed in watching monitor
screens shown on television emissions, that flickering becomes more apparent when
we video-record what appears on the screen. That effect happens because of the dif-
ference in the frequency (refresh rate) of the filmed monitor and that of the observing
video camera. If the refresh rate of the camera is much higher than that of the monitor,
then at some times the camera will record blank screens that we normally do not see
with our naked eye. This concept can be used to measure high-frequency motions.
This is the same phenomenon that causes us to see fast-moving wheel spokes or a
204 Notes
propeller appear to be moving backward (or forward) in slower motion, or even
motionless, when on in fact moving at a very high speed. The illusion happens
because of the human eye’s limit for the tracking and retention of images, which is
usually about one-fifteenth of a second.
4 See for example Gaines (1997).
5 Ibn ‘ Arabi asserts that this person was Asif bin Barkhya, who is known as al-Khadir.
Al-Kliadir literally means ‘the Green One’, a legendary figure endowed with immortal
life. He represents freshness of spirit and eternal liveliness. The stories surrounding
al-Khadir are usually associated with Surat al-Kahf in the Qur’an [18:60-82], where
Allah described the journey of Moses and his servant to the ‘meeting of the two seas’
to meet al-Khadir and learn from him. Ibn ‘Arabi himself mentioned that he had met
him several times [1.186], and he considers him a divine Messenger and one of four
‘Pillars’ in the spiritual hierarchy [II. 5. 31],
6 See Fusils Al-Hikam, with commentary by ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Qashani and Bali
Effendi (Cairo: Al-Maktaba al-Azhariyya li-l-Turath, 1997): 321-324.
7 The black body problem was raised by the observation that certain materials (espe-
cially black bodies) can absorb all frequencies or wavelengths of light. So when
heated they should then radiate all frequencies of light equally - at least theoretically.
But the distribution of energy radiated in real-life experiments never matched up with
the predictions of classical physics.
8 The spin is the motion of the particle around its axis just like the daily motion of the
Earth.
9 For more details about the hierarchy of letters according to Ibn ‘Arabi see the related
English translations by Denis Gril (2004) in The Meccan Revelations, vol. II, NY: Pir
Press: 107-220.
10 Wim van den Dungen, ‘On Being and the Majesty of the Worlds’, Reg. No.51, in
SofiaTopiaNet ; Sophia Society for philosophy, [www.sofiatopia.org/equiaeon/being.
htm#dim],
1 1 Ibn ‘Arabi makes various comments on this verse in the Futuhat [1.156.15, 1.238.13,
1.279.16, 11.16.32, 11.150.34, II.209.9, II.225.6, II.296.6, 11.298.33, 11.556.32,
III.275.33, III.315.6, III.344.30, IV.28.28, IV.93.3],
12 Ibn ‘Arabi explained before this text that angels correspond cosmologically to eight-
een characters of the alphabet, which are produced as a result of the meeting between
the nine divine donating ( ilqa ’) orbs and the nine human accepting (talaqqf) orbs
[1.54.12],
Bibliography
The bibliography is arranged into four categories:
A Ibn ‘ Arabi’s printed works (in Arabic)
B Arabic works on Ibn ‘Arabi and related subjects
C English translations and studies on Ibn ‘Arabi and related subjects
D Cited books and articles on philosophy, cosmology and time
A: Ibn ‘Arabi’s printed works (in Arabic)
The following is a list of Ibn ‘Arabi’s printed books and treatises that are avail-
able in Arabic. This list is arranged alphabetically according to the title, not
including initial article AI-, Kitdb or Risdla. The ‘OY no.’ column on the right
gives the corresponding bibliographical classification of the original manuscripts
by Osman Yahya. The names of editors have been cited whenever given in the
printed text. The numbers given in parentheses immediately after the names of
some individual treatises also refer to Yahya’s classification.
Ibn ‘Arabi (1994) Al-Abadila, Cairo: Maktabat Al-Qahira, 2nd ed., ed. ‘Abd OY#
Al-QadirA. ‘Ata 2
(1999) Aja’ib Al-‘ Irfan fi Tafsir Ijaz Al-Bayan ft AI-Tarjama ‘an Al-Qur ’an,
Cairo: Al-Sharika Al-Muttahida, ed. Muhammad I. M. Salim 732
(1999) Kitdb ‘Anqa’ Mughrib, Cairo: n.p., ed. Muhammad I. M. Salim 30
(n.d.) ‘Aqidafi Al-Tawhid, or ‘Aqidat ahl Al-Islam, Egypt: n.p. 34
(1919) ‘Uqlat Al-Mustawfiz, including Kitdb Insha ’Al-Dawd ’ir and 802
Kitdb Al-Tadbirat Al-Ildhiyya fi Islah Al-Mamlaka Al-Insdniyya, Leiden: 289
Brill; in Kleinere Schriften des Ibn Al-Arabi, ed. H. S. Nyberg 716
(1954) Kitdb Al-Bd ’, Cairo: Maktabat Al-Qahira, also includes: Kitdb Al-Ya’
(OY no. 205), Kitdb Al-Jaldla (169), Kitdb AI-Alif{ 25), Kitdb Al-Sha ’n (26) 71
(1968) Dhakhd ’ir alA'laq, Cairo: n.p. 116
(1855) Diwan Ibn ‘Arabi, Bulaq 102
(1996) Diwdn Ibn Arabi, Beirut: Dar Al-Kutub Al-Tlmiyya, ed. Ahmad Hasan
Basaj 102
(1923) Al-Durrat Al-Bayda’, Beirut: n.p. 178
(1946) Fusits Al-Hikam, Cairo: n.p.; critical edition by A. ‘Affifi 150
206 Bibliography
— (1997) Fusiis Al-Hikam with commentary by ‘ Abd Al-Razzaq Al-Qashani and
Bali Effendi, Cairo: Al-Maktabat Al-Azhariyya li-l-Turath 1 50
— (n.d.) Al-Futuhdt Al-Makkiyya, Vols 1-4, Beirut: n.p.; this is a photographic
reprint of the old edition of Bulaq 1329/1911 which comprises four volumes each
about 700 pages of 35 lines; the page size is 20 by 27 cm. This is the standard
version used in citations throughout this book. 135
— (1970 ) Al-Futuhat Al-Makkiyya, Vols. 1-14, ed. Osman Yahya, Cairo: The
General Egyptian Book Organization; this is the critical edition by Osman Yahya.
This version was not completed, and the 14 volumes correspond to only volume I
of the standard Bulaq/Beirut edition. 135
— (AH 1326) Hilyat Al-Abddl, Istanbul: n.p. 237
— (1907) Kitab Al-Hujub, Cairo: n.p. 247
— (2004) Kitab Al-Hujub, Cairo: Maktabat Al-Thaqafa Al-Diniyya, ed. As‘ad
‘Abd Al-Fattah 247
— (1988) Kitab Al-Isra ila Al-Maqam Al-Asra or Kitab Al- Mi' raj , Beirut:
Dandarah; critical edition, ed. Su‘ad Al-Hakim. 313
— (n.d.) Istilahat Al-Sufiyya, Cairo: ‘AlamAl-Fikr 315
— (1996) Kalimat Allah or Kitab Al-Jalala, Damascus: Al-Hikma, ed. Riyad M.
Al-‘ Abdullah 169
— (1987) Kitab Al-Khalwat Al-Mutlaqa, Cairo: n.p. 255
— (1967) Kitab Kunh ma la Budd li-l-Murid Minhu, Cairo: M. A. Subaih 352
— (1970) Kitab Al-Mabadi wa-l-Ghdydt, Damascus: n.p. 380
— (1949) Majmu'at Sa'at Al-Khabar, Cairo: Mustafa Al-Halabii 642
— ( 1 999) Al-Masa'il li-Idah Al-Masd ’ il , Amman: Azmina, ed. Qasim M. Abbas 433
— (1907) Mawaqi' Al-Nujum, Cairo: n.p. 443
— (n.d.) Mir ’at Al-Ma'dni, photocopy of a book in Al-Maktaba Al-Zahiriyya,
Damascus: n.p. 230
— (AH 1369) Mishkat Al-Anwdr, Cairo: n.p. 480
— (n.d.) Muhddarat Al-Abrdr wa Musdmarat Al-Akhydr, Vols 1 & 2, Beirut:
Dar Sadir 493
— (1978 ) Al-Nur Al-Asna bi-Munajat Allah bi Asma’ihi Al-Husna, Cairo:
M. A. Subayh 502
— (1994) Kitab Al-Qasam Al-Ilahi bil-Ism Al-Rabbani, Cairo: n.p. 565
— (n.d.) Radd Al-Muhkam ila Al-Mutashdbih, Cairo: ‘Aalam Al-Fikr, ed. ‘Abd
Al-Rahman Hasan Mahmud 588
— (n.d.) Rasa ’il Ibn ‘Arabi, Beirut: Dar Ihya’ Al-Turath Al-‘ Arabi; this is a
photographic reprint, in a single volume, of the same famous collection published
by the Da’irat Al-Ma‘arif Al-‘Uthmaniyya (Hyderabad, 1948), based on a
manuscript in the Ayasofia library (Istanbul), no. 376, containing 29 short works. Many
of these works have been published also separately or in other groups of collected
treatises. These are the books and pamphlets contained in this collection, in the same
order:
Part I 1 . Kitab Al-Fana ’fi Al-Mushahada 125
2 . Kitab Al-Jalal wa-l-Jamdl 168
3. Kitab Al-Alif wa huwa Kitab Al-Ahadiyya 25
4. Kitab Al-Jalala wa huwa Kalimat Allah 1 69
5. Kitab Al-Sha’n 67
6. Kitab (Maqdm) Al-Qurba 414
Bibliography 207
7. Kitab Al-I'ldm bi-Isharat Ahl Al-Ilham 281
8. Kitab Al-Mim wa-l-Wdw wa-l-Nun 462
9. Risdlat Al-Qasam Al-Ilahi 565
10. Kitab Al-Ya 205
11. Kitab Al-Azal 68
12. Risdlat Al-Anwar 33
1 3 . Kitab A l-Isra ild A l-Maqdm A l-Asra 313
14. Risdlafi Su’al Ismd'il bin Sawdakin 182
15. Risdlat Al-Shaykh ild Al-Imdm Al-Razi 612
16. Risdlat La Yu'awwal ‘Alavhi 532
17. Kitab Al-Shahid 668
Part II 1 8 . Kitdib A l- Tardjim 737
19. Kitab Manzil Al-Qutb wa Maqdmuhu wa Hdluhu 585
20. Risdlat Al-Intisar 294
21. Kitab AI-Kutub 354
22. Kitab Al-Masa’il 433
23. Kitab Al-Tajalliy at 738
24. Kitab Al-Isfar 'an Nata’ij Al-Asfdr 307
25. Kitab Al-Wasaya 817
26 . Kitab Hilyat Al-Abdal 237
27 . Kitab Naqsh Al-Fusus 528
28. Kitab Al-Wasiyya 820
29. Kitab Istildh Al-Sufiyya 315
(2002-04) Rasd’il Ibn ‘Arabi, Beirut: Mu’assasat Al-Intishar Al-‘Arabi, ed. Sa‘id
‘Abd Al-Fattah; four volumes in this series of collected treatises have been published so
far. Most of their contents are available in separate books from other earlier publishers
(including many of those listed separately here), but the editor has given some critical
notes and comparisons between different manuscripts. A number of the treatises included
in this collection are clearly apocryphal works. These are the books and pamphlets
contained in these four volumes, in the same order (with page nos):
Parti 31-70 Fihras Mu’allafat Ibn ‘Arabi 142
71-118 Kitab Al-‘Azama 70
119-130 Kitab Maratib ‘Ulum Al-Wahb 423
131-146 Kitab Al-Huruf Al-Thaldtha 462
147-156 Kitab Al-Lum‘a 112
157-192 Kitab Manzil AI-Manazil Al-Fahwanivya 412
193-206 Risdlafi Asrdr Al-Dhat Al-Ildhiyya
207-232 Kitab Al-Qutb wa-l-bnamayn wa-I-Mudlijin 585
233-246 Kitab Maqdm Al-Qurba 414
247-264 Kitab Al-Madkhal ild Al-Maqsad Al-Asma fi Al-Ishdrat
265-278 Kitab Nuskhat Al-Haqq 551
279-347 Kitab Shaqq Al-Jayb bi-'Ilm Al-Ghayb 671
Part II 18-61 Kitab Al-Qutb Wa-l-Nuqaba' 548
62-131 ‘Uqlat Al-Mustawfiz 802
131-145 Risdlat Al-Durrat Al-Bavdd’ 178
146-231 Risdlat Al-Anwdr fi md Yumnahu Sahibu Al-Khalwa min
Al-Asrar 33
208 Bibliography
233-287
Taj Al-Rasa 'il wa Minhaj Al-Wasa ’il
736
288-106
Kitab Al-Tadbirdt Al-Ildhiyya ji Isldh Al-Mamlakat Al-Insdniyya289
Al-Kawkab Al-Durri ji Manaqib dhi-l-Nun Al-Masri
19-76
Kitab Al-Yaqin
834
79-162
Kitab ' Anqa’ Maghrib
30
165-311
Kitab Al-Ma‘rifa
433
Rasa 'il Ibn ' Arabi ; Kashf Al-Sitr (Amman: Azmina, 2004), ed. Qasim M. Abbas.
Includes the following treatises (several apparently apocryphal):
69-90 Kashf Al-Sitr li Ahl Al-Sirr 340
91-97 Risdlat Al-Waqt wAl-An
95-111 Kitab Maratib ‘Ulum Al-Wahb 423
113-131 Kitab Al-Huwa 205
133-143 Risdlat Al-Ma‘lum min ‘Aqa’id Ahl Al-Rusum 402
145-167 Kitab Al-Ittihad Al-Kawni fi Hadhrat Al-Ishhad Al-'Ayni
(2000) Majmu'at Rasa’il Ibn ‘Arabi, Beirut: Dar Al-Mahajjat Al-Bayda; most of the
contents of these three volumes, as in no. 64 above, are brought together from previously
published separate books or collections, but the reprinted versions in this volume are
newly type in a clearer modem font. Three volumes containing a collection of treatises as
follows:
Parti
Part II
Part III
7-74 Tahdhib Al-Akhldq 745
75-94 Al-Maw‘iza Al-Hasana 448
95-230 Risdlat Ruh Al-Quds 639
231-258 Al-Vjdla 772
259-290 (Risdlat) Al-Anwar 33
291-308 ‘Aqidafi Al-Tawhid aw ‘Aqidat Ahl Al-Islam 34
309-358 Shajarat Al-Kawn 666
359-372 Al-Nur Al-Asnd bi-Munajat Allah bi Asma’ihi Al-Husna 502
373 — 422 Tanbihat ‘Ala ‘Uluww Al-Haqiqat Al-Muhammadiyya 763
423—154 Al-Khalwat Al-Mutlaqa 255
455-520 Kitab Al-Bd’ 71
521-546 Kitab Kunh ma Id Budd li-l-Murid Minhu 352
547-574 Istildhdt Al-Sufiyya 315
575-602 Al-Hikma Al-Hdtimiyya 233
603-622 Risdlat Al-Shaykh ila Al-Imdm Al-Razi 612
623-662 Tawajjuhat Al-Huruf [including: Al-Salawat Al-Mutalsama,
Al-Salawdt Al-Akbariyya (OY no. 705), Al-Salawat Faydivya
(702), Al-Dawr Al-A‘la (244) and Al-Salat Al-Ndriyya\ 244
5-66 Al-Tanazzuldt Al-Layliyya Ji Al-Ahkdm Al-Ilahiyya 761
67-314 Al-Tanazzuldt Al-Mawsiliyya Ji Asrar Al-Taharat Wa-l-Salawdt
Wa-l-Ayydm Al-Asliyya 762
315-504 Radd Al-Mutashdbih ild Al-Muhkam min Al-Aydt wAl-Ahddith 588
5-60 ‘Anqa’ Mughribji Khatm Al-Awliyd wa Shams Al-Maghrib 30
61-250 Al-Abddila 2
25 1-374 MawdqV Al-Nujum wa Matdli' Ahillat Al-Asrdr wa-l-‘Ulum 443
375 — 484 Majmu'at Sa at Al-Khabar 642
Bibliography 209
(1998) Rasa ’ll Ibn ‘Arabi: Shark Mubtada 'Al-Tufan wa Rasa 'il Ukhrd, Abu Dhabi:
Cultural Foundation, eds Qasim M. Abbas and Husayn M. ‘Ujayl; this book contains 12
probably apocryphal treatises which are based on a manuscript in the Museum of Iraq
(Baghdad no. 597), listed by its publishers as an autograph dated AH 635. The editors
claim that those works were written by Ibn ‘Arabi between AH 636 and 638 in apparent
contradiction with the earlier date they assign to their manuscript:
1 ‘Ayn Al-A‘yan
2 Khuritj Al-Shukhus min Buruj Al-Khusus 262
3 Inkhirdq Al-Junud ila Al-Julud 288
4 Bahr Al-Shukr fiNahr Al-Nukr
5 Shark Mubtada’ Al-Tufan 685
6 Al-Miqdar fi Nuzul Al-Jabbar 472
7 Nashr A l-Bayad fiRawdat A l-Riydd
8 Khatimat Nuzul Al-Jabbar
9 Al-Radd ‘aid Al-Yahud 80
10 Khatimat Al-Radd ‘aid Al-Yahud 256
11 Baqiyy at Khatimat Al-Radd ‘ala Al-Yahud
12 Kashf Sirr Al-Wa'd wa Bayan ‘Alamat Al-Wajd 342
(n.d.) Al-Risala Al-Wujudiyya ( The Treatise on Being), Cairo: n.p. 13
(1970) Kitab Ruh Al-Quds, Damascus: n.p. 639
(1964) Risalat Ruh Al-Quds ft Muhdsabat Al-Nafs, Damascus: Matba‘at Al-Tlm 639
(1996) Al-Shajara Al-Nu‘mdniyya, Cairo: n.p. 665
(2003) Shajarat Al-Kawn, Damascus: Dar Al-Mahabba, ed. ‘ Abd Al-Rahim
Mardini 666
(2002) Shark Asma 'Allah Al-Husnd or Kashf Al-Ma‘na ‘an Asma 'Allah
AI-Husna, Cairo: Al-Maktaba Al-Azhariyya li-l-Turath, ed. M. I. M. Salim 338
(1999) Shujun AI-Masjun wa Funun Al-Maftim, Damascus: Sa‘d Al-Din,
ed. Dr ‘All I. Kurd! 692
(2002) Tafsir Ibn 'Arabi, Vols. 1 & 2, Beirut: Dar Sadir; Osman Yahya lists
this work in his classification of Ibn ‘Arabi’s works, on the basis of one manuscript,
but he and all other commentators agree that it is actually by the later figure Abd
al-Razzaq al-Qashani, a famous commentator on Ibn ‘Arabi’s Fusus al-Hikam. 732
(1988) Al-Tajalliyat Al-Ildhiyya, Tehran: Danishgah-i Tehran; critical edition
by Osman Yahya, with the anonymous commentary Kashf Al-Ghdyat and Ibn
Sawdakin’s notes 738
(1987) AI-Tanazzuldt Al-Layliyya fi Al-Ahkdm Al-Ilahiyya, together with Risdla
fi Nasab AI-Khirqa (OY no. 530), Cairo: ‘Alam Al-Fikr, ed. ‘ Abd Al-Rahman
Hasan Mahmud 761
(1986) Al-Tanazzulat Al-Mawsiliyyafi Asrdr Al-Tahardt Wa-l-Salawdt
Wa-I-Ayydm Al-Asliyya or Tanazzul Al-Amldkfi ‘Alam Al-Afl.dk, Cairo: ‘Alam
Al-Fikr, ed. ‘Abd Al-Rahman Hasan Mahmud 762
(1966) Tarjuman Al-Ashwaq, Beirut: Dar Sadir; this volume is in fact the 116
Kitab AI-Dhakhd 'ir wa-l-A ‘Idq, which is Ibn ‘Arabi’s own commentary on 767
his Tarjuman Al-Ashwaq (OY no. 767).
(n.d.) Tawajjuhat Al-Huruf Cairo: Maktabat Al-Qahira; includes Al-Dawr
Al-A‘ala or Hizb Al-Wiqdyah li man 'Arada Al-Wilaya (244) and a few short
works or prayers upon the Prophet including Al-Salawat Al-Faydiyva (702). 244
210 Bibliography
B: Arabic works on Ibn ‘Arabi and related subjects
‘Abdul-Muta‘al, A. (2003) Tasawwur Ibn Sind li-l-Zamdn wa Usuluh Al-Yundniyya (Ibn
Sind s Concept of Time and Its Greek Origins ) Alexandria: Dar Al-Wafa’
Abu Zayd, N. H. (1983) Falsafat Al-Ta’wil (A Study of Ibn 'Arabi’s Interpretation of
Qur’an ), Beirut: Dar Al-Wahda
(2002) Hdkadha Takallama Ibn ‘Arabi (That Is What Ibn ‘Arabi Said), Cairo: The
General Egyptian Book Organization
Al-Ghazali, M. (1927) Tahafut AI-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), ed. M.
Bouyges with a summary in Latin, Beirut: n.p.
Al-Hakim, S. (1981 ) Al-Mujam Al-Sufi: Al-Hikma fi Hudiid Al-Kalima (The Sufi Diction-
ary: The Wisdom in the Word), Beirut: Dandarah
(1991) Ibn ‘Arabi wa Mawlid Ltigha Jadida (Ibn ‘Arabi and the Birth of a New
Language), Beirut: Al-Mu'assasa Al-Jami‘yya
Al-Jili, A. (1970) Al-Insdn Al-Kdmil fi Ma'rifat Al-Awa’il wAl-Awdkhir (The Perfect
Human Being . . .), Cairo: Mustafa Al-Babi Al-Halabi
(1999) Maratib Al-Wtjud (The Levels of Existence), Cairo: Maktabat Al-Qahira
Al-Kindi (1950) Rasa 'il Al-Kindi Al-Falsafiyya, Risala fi Al-Falsafa Al-Uola (Al-Kindi s
Philosophical Treatises, a Treatise on the First Philosophy), ed. Muhammed A. Abu
Rida, Cairo: n.p.
Al-Marzuqi (2002) Al-Azmina wAl-Amkina (The Times and the Places), ed. Muhammad
N. Al-Daylami, Beirut: ‘Alama li-l-Kutub
Al-Muttaqi Al-Hindi (1989) Kanz Al-‘Ummal (The Treasure of the Workers), Beirut:
Mu’assasat Al-Risala
Al-Nisaburi, M ., A1 Mustadrak ‘ala Sahihayn (n.d.) Beirut: Dar Al-Kutub Al-Tlmiyya.
Al-Shafi‘i, A. (1980) Al-Siraj Al-Wahhaj fi Haqa’iq Al-Isra’ wa’l-Mi'raj’, in Mawsu'at
Al-Isra wa’l-MTraj , Cairo: Maktabat Al-Il-Ttisam
Al-Sha’rani, A. (1959) Al-Yawaqit wa-l-Jawdhirfi Baydn Aqd ’id Al-Akdbir, Cairo: Mustafa
Al-Babi Al-Halabi; including: Al-Kibrit Al-Ahmar fi Baydn ‘Ulitm Al-Shaykh Al-Akbar
Al-Taftazani, A. G. (1973) Ibn Sab'in wa Falsafatuh Al-Sufiyya (Ibn Sab'in and His Sufi
Philosophy), Beirut: Dar Al-Kitab Al-Lubnani
Al-Tu‘aymi, M., ed. (1994) Mawsu'at Al-Isra wa ’l-Mi‘raj, Beirut: Dar Al-Hilal
‘ Al-Turath Al-'ArabT , periodical magazine published by the Arabic Authors Union in
Damascus, special issue 80, July 2000; this issue was devoted to Ibn ‘Arabi, with ten
articles by various Arab writers.
Badawi, A. (1965) Aristutalis, Al-Tabi‘a. Tarjamat Ishaq ibn Hunayn ma'a shuruh Ibn Al-
Samh wa Ibn ‘Adi wa Matta ibn Yunus wa Abi Al-Faraj ibn ayyib, 2 vols (Aristotle s
Physics . . .), Cairo: The General Egyptian Book Organization
Ibn Sina (1983) Al-Shifa’ [Al-Tabi‘iyyat: Al-Sama' Al-Tabi‘i\, ed. Sa‘id Zayid, Cairo:
L’ Organisation Egyptienne Generate du Livre
Ibn Taymiyya (1969) Jami‘ Al-Rasd’il (The Collection of Treatises), ed. Muhammad
Rashad Salim, Cairo: Maktabat Al-Madani
Madhkur, I. B. ed. (1969 ) Al-Kitab AI-Tadhkari, Muhyi Al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi (The Commem-
orative Book of Muhyi ed-Din Ibn ‘Arabi), Cairo: The General Egyptian Book Organi-
zation
Mahmud, A. ed. (1995) Diwan Ibn Al-Farid (Ibn Al-F arid’s Poetry), Cairo: ‘Ayn for
Human and Social Studies
Radi, A. A. (1970) Al-Riihiyya ‘inda Ibn ‘Arabi (Spirituality in Ibn ‘Arabi), Cairo: Makta-
bat Al-Nahda Al-Masriyya
Bibliography 211
Salim, M. I. (1993) Ta'yid Al-Sufiyya fi Al-Majmu’a Al-Hdtimiyya (Supporting the Sufis
Through the Hdtimi Works), Cairo: Maktabat Hamada
(1996) Miftah Al-Futuhdt Al-Makkiyya ( The Key to the Meccan Openings), Cairo:
Al-Sharika Al-Muttahida
Yahya, O., trans. Ahmad Al-Tayyib (2001) Mu’allafdt Ibn ‘Arabi, Tarikhuhd wa Tasni-
fuha (History and Classification of Ibn ‘Arabi s Books), Cairo: The General Egyptian
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Index
Achilles paradox 171
active force 9, 25, 37, 62; see also
intellective force
Adam 9, 44, 53, 70, 76, 83, 85, 89, 90, 92,
96, 97, 98, 125, 128, 182, 188, 198nl3,
198nl4, 201n20
after- world, the 163; see also hereafter
age 7, 17, 30, 31, 33, 44, 59, 69, 71, 98,
173, 199nl
all-creative 173
all-encompassing 33, 70, 106, 115, 161,
170, 202n8
All-Hearing 52, 109
AU-Knower 90, 151, 197n3
All-Merciful 9, 11, 39, 61, 82, 97, 127,
128, 131, 132, 156, 157, 163, 179, 181,
194nl 1, 196nl2, 201nl4
All-Mighty 102, 197n3
All-Prevailing 89
All-Sufficient 35, 110
All- Wise 122
alphabet 65, 74, 84, 85, 89, 155, 181, 182,
183, 185, 204nl2
analogy 93, 121-2, 150, 152-6, 159-60,
164, 171, 180, 182, 195n3, 198nl8,
201nl8
Andromeda 4
angel 8, 63, 76, 83, 89, 91, 94, 97, 125,
142, 151-2, 156, 163, 183-5, 187-91,
194n9, 197nl6, 204nl2
animal 19, 94, 142, 148, 202nl4
animated 132
anisotropy 5
annihilation 40, 48, 166, 167, 169, 185
anti-clockwise 153
anti -particle 40, 167
Archangels 152, 188
Aristotle 1,2, 14, 17-20,28, 30-1, 118,
171-2
arrow, of time 16, 23; paradox 171
A-series 21; see also B-series
astrology 52, 74, 76, 82, 84, 94, 163
astronomy 1-3, 7, 14, 22, 40, 55, 57, 59,
60, 74-5, 78, 80-2, 99, 112, 119, 130,
184, 195n22, 197n5, 198nll
atmosphere 56
atom 16, 18-19, 40, 43, 47-8, 66, 115,
137, 141, 143, 149, 166-7, 169, 171-5,
189, 196n6, 199n8, 202n8, 203n2
attribute 5, 27, 39, 52, 68-9, 76-7, 81-2,
87, 109, 125, 128, 147-8, 155, 159, 187,
195n2, 196nl2, 200n9, 201nl2
automata 25
Babylonians 75, 79, 83, 114, 129, 150,
198nl 1
Bible 99
Bilqis 168-9
biology 16, 24, 74
B-series 21; see also A-series
bubbles 71
calendar 59, 79, 110, 198nll
cardinal 154
causality 32, 36, 43, 124, 165, 170, 176-9
celestial 13, 14, 40-1, 45, 48, 55, 58, 60,
69, 75, 88, 113, 115, 147, 154, 179,
197n3, 199n5
Chaos 1,9
charge 37, 167, 180, 188, 196nll
chest 50-1
Christian 20, 91, 197n7, 200n5, 201nl6
chronological 16, 25, 29, 32, 81, 176
Chronos 17
cinema 49, 160
circle 20, 33, 51, 53, 55, 67, 95, 101-2,
108, 120-2, 150, 152, 168, 185-7,
196n8, 198nl, 199n3, 203nl5; circular,
Index 219
1, 16, 17-18, 20, 41, 51-2, 55, 70, 74-5,
86, 93, 100-2, 104, 106-8, 110-11;
circulate, 1, 55, 70, 74-5, 86, 93, 100-2,
104, 106-8, 111, 199n3; see also cycle
circumambulation 47, 95, 152-4
circumference 3, 51, 56, 101, 120, 151,
155-6, 186
circumstance 16, 37, 39-40, 176
clime 84, 88, 154
clock 16, 22, 24, 46
cloud 11, 185
cluster 3, 4, 66
COBE 5
coherence 16
coincide 33, 99, 110
cold 23, 94, 147
coldness 98
collapse 15, 23
colour 118, 148, 150, 162, 184, 201n21
Command, the Divine 34, 42, 64, 78, 87,
95, 96, 109, 113, 128, 129, 132, 143,
144, 177
computer 25, 106, 124, 160-1, 166-7, 192,
203n3
cone-shaped 63
constellation 4, 12-14, 40, 55, 57, 74, 76,
79, 84, 89-90, 93, 110, 115
Copenhagen 174
Copernicus 1-3, 8
cosmogony 133, 135, 162, 166-7, 185-6
cosmology 27, 31, 37, 41, 44, 53, 58, 60,
67, 71, 73-8, 82, 84, 94, 99, 102, 1 17,
119, 120-1, 123, 129, 133, 140, 142,
145, 151-2, 159, 161-2, 165-70, 172,
174, 175, 181-2, 184-5, 193nl, 195n21,
195n26, 199nl, 200n5, 201nl4, 201nl8,
202n4, 204nl2; Ibn ‘Arabi’s 14-16;
introduction to 1-9; and time 23, 25
creation 1, 5, 8, 9, 11, 18, 20, 26, 37, 38,
43, 48-9, 53, 57-8, 65-9, 73-6, 78-84,
106, 109-11, 126, 127, 129-37, 139-43,
145-47, 149, 151-53, 155, 158-63,
166-70, 172-3, 175-8, 182-3, 185-6,
190, 196n9, 196nl2, 197n5, 197n8,
198nl4, 198nl6, 198nl7, 198nl8,
201nl4, 202nl3; Creator 32, 53, 58,
68-9, 76, 89, 93-1, 97, 117, 120-4, 130,
133, 137, 139, 143-5, 147, 151, 163,
178; creatures 8, 11, 15,61,64, 89,91,
94-6, 98, 111, 122, 124-5, 131, 133,
137, 149, 162, 178, 184, 187, 193n7,
200n6; and Divine Names 117-24; the
days of 86-102; the origin of 3 1-35,
193n8
cycle 52-3, 55-7, 59-60, 65, 74, 78, 80,
87, 96, 109, 1 10, 163; cyclic 25, 33, 51,
52, 62, 199n3; see also circle
day 9, 25, 38, 39, 44, 47-9, 53, 59, 60-71,
73-6, 78-103, 105-16, 125, 129, 136-7,
141, 152-3, 158, 161-4, 168-70, 179,
182-3, 188, 194nl 1, 197n5, 198nll,
199n2, 199n3, 199n7; daytime 25, 29,
47, 52, 54, 56-63, 67, 70-1, 81, 84, 92,
95-6, 99-107, 109, 116, 129, 135, 141,
173, 196nl2, 197nl2, 199n2, 199n3
dialectical 41
diameter 3
Dichotomy paradox 171
doctrine 20, 75, 76, 122, 130, 142, 145,
159, 170-71, 196nl0
earth 14-15, 40-2, 44-5, 48, 57-8, 64, 65,
73, 77-9, 81, 85-6, 88, 99, 103-4,
111-2, 116, 141, 147, 156, 190
Einstein 2-5, 17, 21-2, 24, 173-5, 180
electromagnetic 40, 166, 188, 201n21
electron 16, 43, 161-3, 166, 167-9, 180
entropy 16, 23
epicycles 184
epiphany 9
EPR 3, 139, 165, 170, 174
equator 110, 158, 199n5
equinox 116
essence 18, 27, 33-6, 50, 56, 62, 68,
89-90, 114, 118, 127-8, 132-4, 137,
142-4, 146, 148, 159, 178, 186-7,
194nl0, 195n5
eternal 6, 17, 19, 20, 31, 33-5, 44, 62,
67-8, 87, 94, 96, 97-8, 117, 131, 141,
157-8, 171, 204n5
eternity 46, 68, 94-6, 162-3, 195n3
ethical 133
etymological 80
Euclidean 20, 195n26; see also non-
Euclidean
foreknowledge 33-4, 82, 87, 97, 106
form 8, 30, 35, 45, 52, 64, 72, 81, 92-3,
95, 96, 103, 113, 127-9, 132, 133, 136,
137-42, 146-8, 159-62, 165, 175-6,
179, 1 82 — 4, 187-8, 194nl0, 196n6,
199nl, 201nl8, 202n8, 203nl9
formable 29, 30
formations, 19, 138, 147, 159
Friday 38, 49, 74, 75, 82, 85-6, 90-2,
94-8, 104, 106-7, 141, 163, 179,
194nl 1
220 Index
galaxy 2-5, 10-12, 38, 40, 79, 110, 192,
193nl, 193n3, 195n26
Gehenna 14, 40, 96, 98-9, 188-9, 196nl2
Gemini 38, 87, 110, 112
Generosity 117
genesis 83
geocentric 1, 14, 193nl
geographical 83, 88, 154
geology 53
geometry 6, 20-1, 97, 121-2, 186, 195n26
God 8, 15, 20, 31, 33-6, 46-8, 53, 63, 66,
73, 75-6, 78,91-2, 111-12, 115, 125,
132-3, 142, 158-9, 178, 185-8, 190,
194nl0, 194nl 1, 197n3, 198nl4, 200n6,
200n7
gold 147
Greatest Element, the 67, 97, 115, 128,
141, 143, 149-55, 157-8, 161, 180,
185-6, 189, 199nl
Greek 1, 17-18, 20, 74, 142, 182, 200n5
grindstone 2
heaven 7, 14-15, 17, 25, 39^12, 45, 53, 55,
57, 63, 70, 73-5, 77-9, 83-91, 93, 97-9,
112-13, 154, 157, 188, 194nll, 199n7
heliocentric 1,8, 14, 193nl
hereafter 184, 188, 191-2
hexadecimal 114
hidden 39, 58, 63, 70, 102, 105, 106, 133,
140, 157-8, 173-5, 181-2, 193n7
Holy 32, 106, 148
homogeneous 5, 12, 20, 195n26; see also
inhomogeneous
imagination 4, 8, 15-17, 25-9, 33, 35, 40,
43-5, 49, 50-1, 53, 56, 64, 69-71, 81,
95, 98, 104-5, 108, 119-20, 123, 125,
136, 140-1, 144, 147, 172, 191, 194nl0
infinite 11, 16, 17,21-2,33-4, 47,48,51,
59, 61, 64, 66, 111, 114, 119, 121, 125,
134, 147, 169-72, 186
infinitesimal 64, 141
infinitum 19, 34, 171
infinity 21, 24, 172
inflation 5
inhomogeneous 25; see also homogeneous
instant 6, 18, 22, 24, 26, 29, 30, 43, 48-50,
64-6, 97, 106, 124, 135, 136-9, 141-2,
147, 158-9, 161-3, 168-71, 173-6, 179,
182, 187, 191
integer 79-80, 192
intellect 9-11, 25, 37, 61-2, 64, 67, 71, 77,
83,90, 115, 123-4, 128-30, 133-5, 139,
142 — 4, 150-3, 157, 160, 162, 165, 179,
182-3, 185-6, 199nl, 200n4, 202n4,
202nl0, 202nl4
intellective force 9, 25, 37, see also: active
force
intertwined days, the 48-9, 57, 73, 81-2,
93, 100-1, 103, 106-9, 111, 114, 137,
163, 167-8
intrinsic 26, 35-6, 49, 60, 97, 126, 136-7,
141-2, 157, 175, 184
isthmus 134
Jupiter 85, 90
Kaaba 46-7, 95, 152-5, 167
Khidr 168-9
Leibniz 20-1, 49
Libra 53, 197n3
light 2-4, 14, 22-4, 38, 40, 41, 55-6, 63,
88, 96, 102, 105, 117, 130-3, 136, 148,
156, 166-70, 173-5, 179, 187-8, 193n3,
195n28, 197nl2, 201n21, 203n3, 204n7;
Muhammadan light, 202nl0
lunar 41, 52, 59, 61, 74, 76, 78-80, 83, 85,
88-90, 93, 110, 198nl 1
macrocosm 82, 86, 151, 154
Man 30, 83, 115, 182, 196n8
mansion 13, 74, 76, 87-90, 93, 110
Mars 85, 89
Mecca 7, 95; Meccan Revelations
(Illuminations) 7, 204n9
mechanic 2, 5, 16, 22, 49, 169
Mercury 53, 85, 89
Messenger 13, 32, 47, 133, 135-6, 177-8,
204n5
metaphysics 1, 16, 18, 22-3, 48, 52, 100,
117-20, 123 — 4, 128-9, 140, 142, 146,
149, 151-6, 183
microcosm 82, 86, 99, 151, 160, 174,
198nl8
micro-organisms 74
microwave 5
millstone 41
minerals 167
minute 3, 26, 31, 44, 48, 57, 59, 65, 78, 87,
100, 106, 111, 114-15, 168, 199n8
miracle 169
model, the Single Monad see monad
moment 4, 6, 15, 17-18, 21, 26, 28-9, 35,
38-9, 43-6, 48-9, 51, 53, 58, 62, 64-7,
71,73,96-8, 101-2, 114, 136-8, 141-2,
145, 158, 161-2, 166, 169-70, 173, 175,
203nl7
Index 22 1
momentum 174, 195n27
monad 10, 30, 67, 89, 97, 115, 127-8,
135-7, 139, 195n5, 196n6, 203; the
Single Monad model 4, 65, 140-92,
202nl, 202n4, 202n8
Monday 38, 50, 52, 82, 84-6, 88, 89, 100,
103-4, 107, 109, 111
monism 117, 171
monitor 160-3, 203n3
monotheism 76, 117
month 45, 48, 74, 78-81, 83, 91, 1 10,
114-15, 198nl0, 198nll
moon 59, 78
morning 49, 95, 101, 173
mosque 90
mother 9, 29-30, 73, 76-7, 99, 103, 129
motion 2, 4, 7-9, 14-20, 25, 28-31,
37-8, 40-3, 46, 48-9, 51-2, 55-7,
59-62, 67, 73, 78-84, 87-90, 93, 98,
100, 103, 110-13, 116, 136, 137,
160-3, 165-6, 168-74, 176,
179-80, 184, 187, 190, 193n3, 196nll,
197n5, 198nl 1, 199n8, 202n4, 203n3,
204n8
movie 23-4, 124, 159-61, 172, 175
Muhammad 7, 13, 45-7, 52-3, 55, 68-70,
75, 90-1, 95-6, 98-9, 117, 126, 132,
135, 152, 155, 159, 182, 188, 193n8,
194nl2, 197n8, 198nl3, 202nl0
multiplicity 34, 36, 50, 117-10, 144, 156,
157, 170, 173, 186, 201nl3, 202nl
n-D 192
nebulae 3
Newton 2, 5, 20, 22, 42-3, 49, 123,
169-70
night 19, 25, 29, 39, 45, 47, 49, 52, 54,
56-64, 67, 70-1, 81, 84, 91-2, 94-6, 98,
99, 100-9, 116, 129, 135, 141, 173,
196nl2, 199; night-journey 45;
nightmares 200n3; night-time 47, 49,
54, 57, 58, 61, 62, 92, 95, 96, 99, 100,
102-3, 105, 173, 199n2, 199n3
non-Euclidean 21, 195n26, see also:
Euclidean
nonexistence 27, 33-6, 58, 66-9, 87, 94,
105-6, 117, 131-2, 134-9, 144, 148,
166, 199nl0
non-finite 134
non-integer 79
non-material 184
non-physical 27
non-zero 67
noon 49, 101, 158, 203nl7
odd 129
offspring 66
one-dimensional 21, 184
oneness 122, 135-6, 157, 173; of Allah or
of the Real 120-3, 198nl6; of being 4,
20, 25-6, 28, 30, 37, 42, 50, 96-7, 99,
117, 122 — 4, 130-2, 135, 139, 140, 144,
170-1, 184, 187, 190, 203nl9; of light
132; of time 122
ontology 8, 18, 22, 33-4, 39, 66, 90, 98,
117, 130-8, 171, 176, 179
orb 1, 3, 7, 12-14, 19, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31,
37, 38, 40-4, 53, 55-63, 65, 69-71, 73,
76, 79, 81, 83 — 4, 86-9, 94, 103, 1 10-11,
113, 115, 119, 144, 147, 155-6, 166,
169, 181, 197n3, 204nl 1
orient 55-6
pantheism 117
Paradise 90, 98, 152, 188, 191-2
paradox 118, 120, 183
paranatural 31, 37
para-psychological 176
parsec 3
particle 5, 10, 40, 143, 156, 166, 167, 168,
173, 174, 175, 176, 180, 195n28, 203n2,
204n8
past 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 33,
39, 46, 51, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 144, 145,
165, 180
Pedestal 1 1-15, 38, 40, 58, 65, 87, 1 10-11,
196nl2
Pen, the Higher, the Universal 9, 11, 115,
142-3, 151, 160, 162-3, 182-3, 187,
191, 199nl, 202nl0; Pen-sounds 182
Perfect Human Being, the 15, 61, 67, 76,
89, 99, 125, 128-9, 132, 134, 142-5,
151, 157, 158-60, 190, 198nl8, 202nl4,
203nl8
period 5, 18, 45, 52, 59-60, 65, 74, 79,
80-1, 98, 111, 114, 173, 198nl0, 199n8
phenomena 62, 101, 140, 165, 167-9, 172,
174, 176, 177, 180, 184, 185,203n3
philosopher 18-19, 21, 23, 26, 29, 31, 35,
42-3,49, 67-8, 78, 115, 118-19, 122-3,
142, 146, 148, 170, 172, 176-7, 184,
194nl3, 194nl4, 194nl6, 195n25,
199n4, 200n5
philosophy 1, 7, 15-20, 22, 24, 27, 41, 47,
49, 118, 120, 129, 131, 171, 194nl4,
195n22, 200n5, 204nl0
photoelectric 173
photon 5, 43, 156, 166-9, 175, 180
222 Index
physical 5, 10-11, 15-16, 18-19,21,
23-25, 27-8, 30-1, 33, 37-8, 41-2,
45, 47-8, 62, 64, 87, 93, 121, 141-2,
146, 149, 155-6, 168, 174, 179, 184,
194nl0, 195n27, 196n9, 196nll,
202n8
physician 19, 194nl6, 195n22
physicist 1,19, 22^1, 42^1, 120, 192
physics 3-6, 15, 16, 21-2, 25, 27, 31, 41,
43, 49, 52, 1 19, 121, 165, 168-70, 174,
180, 1 83 — 4, 188-9, 201nl4, 201n21,
202n8, 204n7
pilgrimage 7, 152-3
pillar 15, 154-5, 188, 204n5
pixel 161-3
Plato 17-19, 31, 160, 171
Plotinus 18-19, 200n5
plural 71, 126, 129, 142, 201nl7
Pole 46, 87-8, 94, 120, 154, 155, 196n8,
198nl3
Power 77, 90, 180
pre-existence 33-5, 69, 87, 143
preordained 79, 83
presence 8, 28-9, 51, 64, 70, 94, 106, 178,
197nl8, 199nl,200n6
pre-Socratics 170
primordial 69, 71, 77, 136, 155, 158,
202nl2
Proxima Centauri 3
psychology 16, 23, 31, 46, 180, 200n3,
201nl8
Ptolemy 1
pulsars 16
Pythagoras 142, 182
quadratic 77
quantisation 5-6, 18, 20-1, 25, 30, 43 — 4,
47-9, 80, 111, 166, 169-70, 172-4
Ramadan 91
rational 16-17, 146
Real 15, 32-3, 36-7, 47, 50-1, 64, 66,
69-70, 76, 87, 90, 92-4, 97, 99, 111,
119-24, 126, 128, 129, 131-7, 140,
142-4, 148, 157-8, 160, 163, 177-8,
181-2, 185-91, 194nl0, 196nl0, 202n9,
203nl5, 203nl7
reality 1, 8, 12-13, 15-16, 20, 22, 26, 28,
30, 32-3, 37, 43, 46, 48, 50-2, 54-5, 57,
60-2, 65-6, 68, 70, 83, 89, 96, 99, 1 12,
117, 119, 121-4, 127-35, 140-4, 146-8,
151-2, 154-8, 160-1, 169-73, 176-8,
180, 183, 187, 189, 201nl8, 202nl0,
202nl4, 202nl5, 203nl9
real-through- whom-creation-takes-place,
the 143, 158, 182
re-creation 18, 26, 35, 38, 42-3, 48-9,
51-2, 64, 96-8, 124, 135, 137-41,
147-8, 159-60, 162, 166-70, 172,
175-6, 184
redshift 2, 22, 193n3
region 15, 55, 63, 83-5, 88, 116, 154, 174
retrograde motion 8
revolution 2, 16, 38, 48, 57, 59-61, 78-80,
112, 114
Sages 71, 196n8
Saturday 25, 38, 39, 49, 58, 71, 73-5,
81-6, 91, 93-5, 96-8, 100, 104, 106,
141, 162-3, 168-9
Saturn 75, 83, 85, 93-4
self-consciousness 9
self-disclosure 87, 89-90, 93
self-existence 120
Self-Existent 32, 34, 36
self-subsistent 123, 133, 135, 139, 146-7,
150
Self-sufficient 36, 137
sexagenary 75, 150
sidereal 55-7, 59, 79
Sierpinski triangle 145
simulation 25, 47, 108, 167-8, 192
simultaneity 170
solar 2, 4, 8, 40, 58-9, 75, 79-81, 84,
193nl, 198nl0, 198nll
Solitary 30, 37, 71, 196n8, 198nl3
Solomon 44, 168-9
space 2-6, 8, 12, 15-16, 20-5, 28-9, 34,
3 8 — 40, 42-4, 46-7, 49-51, 58, 63,
69-71, 74, 89, 96-101, 104-6, 123, 125,
130, 137, 141, 145, 156, 158, 161, 163,
165-6, 168, 171-2, 174-5, 179-80, 185,
189, 191, 194nl2, 195n26, 196n7;
space-time 3, 6, 21-2, 24-5, 38-9, 58,
71, 74, 97-8, 100, 105, 123, 141, 180,
193nl, 195n26
sphere 8, 11-15, 17, 25,41,45, 48,51,
54-5,57-9, 63,88-91,93, 111-13, 115,
151, 156, 177, 179-80, 184, 199n5
spin 57, 79, 180, 204n8
spirit 8-9, 38, 44, 46-7, 53, 61, 63, 71, 87,
95, 97, 99, 130-1, 135, 144, 150, 160,
177, 188, 191, 197n3, 198nl3, 198nl4,
201n20, 203nl, 204n5; spirit-heart-body
130
spiritual 8-12, 15, 27, 30-1, 33, 35, 37, 40,
44-8, 53, 58, 62, 69-70, 73, 83, 88-9,
94, 99, 112-13, 115, 118, 120, 122, 128,
130, 136-7, 140, 145-9, 154-6, 159-60,
164, 173, 177-8, 181-5, 188, 191,
196n8, 197nl5, 197nl8, 199nl, 200n3,
200n4, 202nl4, 203nl8, 204n5
Stadium paradox 1 7 1
star 1-5, 7, 10-17, 23, 29, 33, 38, 40,
44-5, 53-5, 57, 59-61, 70, 79, 87, 104,
107-8, 110, 112, 145, 163, 166, 174,
184, 191-2, 193nl, 193n3, 195n26
strings theory 9, 180-3; see also
superstrings
subatomic 143, 174
sub-entities 67, 68
sub-events 67
sub-intellects 67
sub-moments 67, 145, 173
sufism 6-8, 20, 34, 40-1, 44-6, 66, 69-70,
118-20, 134, 146, 158, 182, 190, 193n7,
194nl2, 201nl2, 203nl
Sumerians 110
sun 1-4, 12-14, 19, 29, 32, 46-7, 52-63,
67, 69, 72, 74-5, 78-81, 85, 87-8, 90-1,
99, 101-3, 106, 111, 116, 130, 145,
157-60, 185, 188; sunlight 157-8, 179;
Sun-Line-Cave 160
Sunday 38, 49, 52, 73, 74-5, 81-2, 84-5,
86-7, 91, 95-8, 100-1, 103-4, 106-11,
141, 163, 179, 194nl 1, 197n7
supernatural 165
superstrings 3, 49, 93, 180, 201nl4
supra-natural 184
taken-out days 57, 81, 84, 100, 102-7,
114, 163
task, the day of 48-9, 59, 64, 66, 73, 98,
100-1, 106, 114, 125, 135, 170, 197n3
technology 3, 16, 161
telepathy 1 80
theology 1, 7, 18-20, 23, 29, 33, 35, 37,
43, 47-8, 58, 68-9, 71-2, 74-5, 78, 99,
115, 120, 131, 137-40, 142, 165, 168,
184, 194nl2, 194nl3, 194nl4, 194nl5,
194n21, 195n2, 195n5, 196n6, 201nl4
theomorphic 86, 90, 92, 96, 198nl6
theory 1, 2, 4-6, 16-17, 20-1, 26, 28, 30,
38-9, 41-2, 44-5, 47-8, 50, 93, 96, 99,
123, 139, 142, 145, 148, 166, 168-75,
180, 195n26, 195n27, 201nl4, 204n7
thermodynamics 16
threefold 117, 128-9, 130
Throne 9-11, 13-15, 39^40, 58, 82, 86,
91, 97-8, 102, 127-8, 152, 156-7, 188,
191, 194nl 1, 196nl2
Index 223
Thursday 75, 82, 85-6, 90-1, 104, 107-8
Timaeus 19
time 15-16, 17-18, 20-1, 23, 27-9, 39,
41-2, 53, 65-6, 78, 99, 1 14, 195n4,
196n9, 198nl3, 199n9; time-gap 166;
timekeeping 16; timeless 168-9; time-
scale 14, 108, 203n2; time-space 49;
timing 16, 54-6, 58, 174, 198nl0
trinity 128, 130, 200n5, 201nl6
Tuesday 38, 82, 85-6, 89, 104
twin paradox, the 45
Unicity 36, 117-39
union 22
unique 4, 8, 14, 20, 25-6, 28, 30, 48, 51-2,
59, 64, 73 — 4, 78, 92-3, 96, 98-100,
117-25, 127, 128, 136-7, 139-40, 151,
156, 161, 175, 184, 195n4, 202nl
unit 7, 29, 40, 58, 62, 67, 71, 74, 78, 97,
100, 105, 142, 149, 150, 164, 167, 186,
190; unity 50, 117, 156
unitary 103
universe 1-6, 8-9, 20, 22-4, 31, 33, 38,
41,46,71, 160, 193nl
unseen 58, 62-4, 119, 131, 184
velocity 7, 18, 42, 44, 168, 174
Venus 85, 90
Virgo 73, 197n3, 197n4
wave 25, 40, 156, 161, 166, 173, 180, 188,
190-1, 195n27, 201n21, 203n2;
wavelength 156, 201n21, 204n7; wave-
particle duality 25
Wednesday 82, 85, 86, 89, 104, 1 12
week 25, 38, 48, 52, 58, 71, 73-109, 163,
197n5, 197n7, 198nl7
year 1-4, 7, 19, 22-4, 31, 40, 44, 45, 48,
52-4, 56, 59, 61, 69, 71, 75, 77-81, 91,
110, 114-16, 150, 152, 163, 197n3,
198nl0, 198nl 1, 199n8
Zeno 28, 42-3, 165, 170-2, 174
zero-dimension 87
zero-length 66
zodiac 10, 12, 14, 55-7, 74, 76, 78-9,
99-100, 103, 110-12, 115-16, 154,
197n2
zone 24
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